Get It Right
by JannP
Summary: Puck/Rachel get down and dirty in this randomly ordered series of one parters.  Mostly smutty and post s1 AU.  NOT RELATED TO THE GLEE ORIGINAL SONG BY THE SAME NAME.  Rated M for good reasons so if you are young and impressionable cover your eyes
1. Chapter 1: Get It Right

**A/N: **_Okay, so this is a first for me on many, many levels. If you aren't into Puck/Rachel or smut, don't read it, mmkay? It's rated M for a reason my friends. It just kind of poured out onto the page listening to Heartbreak Warfare by John Mayer; it's basically all AU though and probably set sometime in their senior year even though there is not much plot-specific in it. Happy reading—and happy replying (please!)_

**Disclaimer: **_ I don't own it. Still._

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There were few times in his life when he hadn't felt like a total fuck-up. The moments were far and few between, but at least they existed. Everyone needed something like that from one time to another, didn't they? He had usually attributed nailing Rachel Berry as one moment of his non-fuck-upitudes.

He groaned. She was so fucking crazy she had him making up new words and they didn't even fucking make sense anymore.

She was shaking her head and her voice was low and dangerous. "You couldn't even go? I mean…I know it was far away but… are you even listening to me?"

Puck sighed and dropped his head to the side, hanging it. "Yes, but you've been saying the same thing for a fucking _hour_."

So, yeah. Right now, dating Rachel didn't feel so much like a gold star as it felt like a punishment. Whatever. She'd been more pissed off before and he'd managed to calm her down. With her, it was just a combination of pushing the right buttons. Apparently, missing her annual performance in Fiddler on the Roof at the Columbus Jewish Center was not cool. Noted.

And apparently, letting his temper get the better of him was not as successful as turning charm on.

"I didn't ask for anything! You didn't even have to say anything nice about it afterward! I just wanted you to go!"

And there she went with the hands in the air… again. His mom was going to hear and his mom would totally take her side.

_Again_.

One of the things with being a badass was he never knew exactly when it was going to come out, and while she seemed to have a way to squash that part of him, she also seemed to have a way to magnify it. Like, at least five times and that was saying a lot for that much badassery. And he was about to go off on her and not in the good way.

He took a deep breath and focused on her face as a whole instead of her constantly moving mouth.

"…wanted a deadbeat for a boyfriend, I would've gone back to Finn when he asked."

Okay, hold up. Timeout.

She stopped. The fuck? Did he say that shit out loud? He looked down and his hands were actually forming a T like he was on the football field. Oh, she hated it when he did that.

"Stop!" He finally said, dropping his hands quickly as he stood up from the bed. "Don't even fucking talk about that to me. You drop his name again and this conversation is over."

"You're actually _threatening _to not talk to me?" She folded her arms tightly against her chest. "Way to be a grown up, Noah. I'm astounded at the progress you've made. I guess I should just be supremely grateful your knuckles aren't dragging on the ground."

He set his jaw and took a deep breath. _Never hit a woman…never hit a woman_. Of course he wouldn't. But he just thought when this was all over he might need to go the rounds with the punching bag in the weight room at school.

"Look," he said, holding a hand up. She stopped pacing and looked. Shit yeah. See… it was all about commanding. Even with a girl like Rachel. He knew this. He could totally do this. He had enough practice by now. "I'm sorry. I should've gone to your performance instead of going to play Halo with the guys."

"Wait…that's what you were doing? Your mom said you were sleeping."

"Oh." He said. Fuck it all. She shook her head and started pacing. It might've been the first time his mom had ever tried to actually cover him…did he really just blow it? Yes, yes he did. Fucking idiot. Maybe if he converted to Catholicism he should be one of those dudes that whip themselves with spikes. But he didn't really want to know if that was their religion what they did for _fun_. And whipping sounded a little too gay.

"It isn't like I expect a lot. I don't plot to ruin your life like Santana did. I _don't_ trust you to come up with all the birth control. I don't make a million stupid demands because I've grown up. All I want is for us to spend time together. I know going to a musical isn't your favorite, but I had way better things planned for this afternoon to thank you. I offset all that other stuff," she offered a helpless shrug. "Is it _really_ asking so much that I want you to put me before video games with the guys for one afternoon?"

His eyes slammed shut. Her voice was doing that high-pitched, wobbly thing it did before she cried. Damn it, he was a sucker for that voice. And she was still watching him, so he grumbled out the only answer he could come up with.

"No," he said in a flat tone. He looked down at his lap.

"So now that we're in agreement there, why did you lie to me about where you were?"

"I didn't. My mom did." He said simply.

And she was whipping out her phone—oh, hell. He had lied via text. He'd woken up kind of late and realized his mom was gone already for the long drive. Since they were down to one car (and since his stint in juvie two years ago, he was down to zero driving privileges until he was eighteen) it meant he didn't have a ride.

She shoved the phone in his face. "That message isn't from your mom. Unless your mom is also 'so sorry baby, I will make it up to you.' " Her tone and her posture, all of it was mocking him. Yeah, she was just winding up some more and her voice was probably going to hit that tone that made him want to light himself on fire—and not in the good way. Just to be clear, there were a couple of voices she had that lit him on fire. This was the not good one.

"Fuck, Rachel. What the hell do you want me to say? You've got me by the balls here."

She looked disgusted. "_Lovely_. That's just what I was after here, too, you..you…you asshole!" She spluttered out. On the rare occasion she squeaked out a swear word, it was usually cute. But this time her fists were clenched and her face was mad and it was scary as fuck.

She paced for a while and he didn't really know what to say and then she was back to being more like an injured bird. "I worked really hard, Noah. I just wish you thought that was important. Not because I expect you to love the theater or because it was a Jewish project—but because it was important to me. You have put up with me being gone for rehearsals, you have run lines with me-"

"—you swore you wouldn't tell anyone that I'm a good pretend ten year old—"

"—and then you didn't show up today, which makes me think you liked that I was gone. You liked the freedom of not having a girlfriend around, and you only did that other stuff so you could get into my pants." She finished, talking right over his interjection. She looked at him sadly. "If that's all the case, then your freedom can be easily arranged."

His jaw slackened as he watched her shake her head , then raise a hand to wipe at her nose with the back of it. Man, she must've really been upset because she normally didn't do shit like that at all…and was she talking about breaking up with him? She would really throw away almost two years (he was shocked admitting it had been that long even to himself, and even now) because he had missed a play?

She was reaching for her purse where it had fallen down in the small space between his double bed and the wall. There was just enough room for her to walk between the two, and the shortest distance from where he was to where she was going was with him crawling across the bed. He did it, then pushed the small black bag out of her hand.

"Come on, babe. I'm sorry. I already said that." He raised his eyebrows. "I know I missed the play and that makes me a bad boyfriend. You've put up with way worse shit from me." He took her hands, one in each of his. "If we break up over something like this, no one wins. I can do better. I did all that other stuff to help you out because I wanted to."

She didn't say anything, but she sniffled again. He dropped one of her hands and reached his free fingers up to swipe the tears from her cheeks. He dropped his voice to the one he knew made her knees weak and he cocked an eyebrow, laying it on a little thick but not really caring as long as they could fix the whole thing right now.

"I love you. I've done a lot of embarrassing shit because I love you so I shouldn't really have to prove myself anymore. I'm sorry I slept in. Once I did, I figured I should just go play video games and then we could hang now instead of then because I didn't have a ride."

"I wanted to look out in the audience and see you there," she sniffled. "One friend. One person I cared about. And you let me down."

Damn, he couldn't pretend that wasn't the most pathetic thing he'd heard in a long time. He knew she didn't have a lot of friends, and despite her drama, all she really ever wanted was support. Love. She liked to say she needed applause to live, but that wasn't entirely true. She needed love. He knew because he was the same way, deep down and way behind closed doors. Okay, well so maybe only with her was he like that. And he'd been like that with Quinn once upon a time. But it was just those two times—he would swear to it. But again, not really in public because even though he'd exclusively dated the same girl for two years (and she kept him from getting into a lot of trouble because her angry face scared him more than juvie ever would), he had a rep to protect.

He had been so willing to toss it out the window for her—that reputation, that life. As soon as he had any indication she was in it, he thought he would be bored with her in the snap of a finger (or… well… something that could be equally as short anyway). Instead, she had become the best thing in his life. He was still catching up to that one a little bit.

He didn't know what to say to her. His jaw flapped as he struggled to form a comeback of any kind. "I…I… well, I'll be at the next one."

She raised an eyebrow, folded her arms across her chest tightly and raised an eyebrow. Her jaw was set, her eyes was blazing. He wasn't sure if he was on the right path to undo all that at all.

"Because I mean, really," he started, his hands on her hips and smoothing over the fabric of her short skirt as he walked on his knees, right to the edge of the bed and lowered his voice. "What is this one play in the context of all the plays you're going to do? Huh?" He could actually hear her teeth grinding. "This one play is nothing, baby. You know I love you. I'll be there for all the other ones, the ones that aren't just community service. I'll pay for my tickets and I'll bring you dozens of roses."

Her breathing was speeding up and her posture had not relaxed. She still didn't look amused. She bent down to pick up the purse from the ground and held it by the thin shoulder strap as she looked at him.

It was time for him to bring the A-game. She was about ready to walk out the door. If she walked out the door, he had this sinking feeling they would never fix this and, even if they didn't break up, it would be one of those fights that would just come back to haunt him at the most inconvenient times. More than that, he knew it would just be the last in a long line of times he had let her down. He was genuinely sorry for each one and didn't want her to have the ammunition for their next war anyway.

"Fiddler on the Roof is a stupid play anyway, babe. You know it as well as I do because we rehearsed it together. Even though it's about a bunch of Jews, it is so not worth your time to keep doing this play anyway because it's far away and you can find even less cut-rate productions closer to home…"

She was shaking. He kept digging.

"I mean, I'm sure you did the best you could but it's one of those plays that makes everyone look ugly and sound stupid and—"

"This not about the fucking quality of the production!" She yelled. Goddamn that girl was fucking loud. And… really? He made her say fuck? Wow. It was like reaching a goal he never knew he had, although he wished it was under totally different circumstances.

"Shh, baby," he said, holding his hands out. "Please don't let my mom hear."

She let out a primal scream (okay, kind of hot but he liked it way better when her face wasn't totally contorted like an angry cage fighter) and took a swing with the purse. As it hit him right on the arm, and he held his arms up in defensive motions, she swung with more vigor and just what the fuck was in that thing, anyway? He was positive it was leaving marks on him from the mother fucking _bricks_ or some shit.

She was yelling incoherent strings of words and he couldn't even understand her through the tears and the raised voice.

"—never thought the general consensus was true but you're nothing but a smarmy, egotistical, arrogant asshole who thinks he can just keep me in his back pocket for times when he's sexually frustrated and fuck if I don't just let—"

He wasn't proud of it even as it happened, but yeah. He totally snapped.

"Stop fucking hitting me with that goddamn thing!" He said, grabbing her purse with so much force the strap snapped as she tried to hang onto it. He flung it backwards, not exactly caring where it landed as long as it stopped running into his arm. He heard the smash of plastic against the far wall of his room but it was not the loudest thing in his head. The blood rushing through his ears was, and he thought his head might pop off or something. He wasn't sure he'd ever been quite that mad before. He grabbed her hard with one hand on each of her biceps and lifted her off the ground, finally kissing her with a hard, expertly moving mouth just to shut her the living fuck up.

She gasped and he just about blacked out from the sudden force of his erection as she used the leverage of his tight grasp to wrap her legs around his waist.

He used his torso to pin her against the wall, balancing himself precariously on the side of the bed as he raised one hand up to twine his fingers through her hair and pull, tugging hard enough to throw her head back so he could see the pulse point throbbing in her neck. Her breathing was as hard and ragged as his and he lowered his mouth to the beating point on the side of her neck. He darted his tongue across it experimentally when she groaned.

"_More_."

Well, there were certain times in his life he didn't mind taking orders, so he closed his lips around his tongue and sucked as hard as he could on the spot. He felt a warm rush of something wet where she was pressed against his waist. His untucked thermal shirt had ridden up with the force of her motion when she had flung her legs around him so quickly, so his bare stomach was pressed right to her.

Where he had her body pressed against the wall so tightly, he was free to use both his hands. While one was holding her hair so he could continue the assault on her neck, he lowered a hand to her breast and grabbed tightly, using his open palm to rub right against the perfect lump of flesh that was hidden underneath her black sweater. Suddenly, that was nowhere near fucking good enough as she let out something between a squeak and a moan that went right through him and made the hardest hard on he'd ever have even thicker.

His hips charged forward to hold her against the wall and he disconnected his lips from her neck, reaching blindly for the hem of her shirt before he yanked it over her head, tossing it behind him much like her purse. As her chest heaved underneath him in nothing but a blue and black lace bra, he surveyed the mark on her neck that was turning a deep purple. She was watching him with fire in her eyes but he thought she might be breathing too hard to speak. He only hesitated for a split second, suspended there and watching her raspy breath as he looked at her swollen lips and marked body, before he dove right back in to suck at the pulse point on the other side.

He felt her fingers grabbing at his head and then her hands insistently lowering his face to her breast. He eased his hands over the silky warmth of her back, pressed between him and the hard wall. He still wasn't quite close enough to her and so he slid one foot out and placed it on the ground, then the other so he was standing. He gave a hard thrust, watching her breasts bounce a little, but he wanted more.

He used the hands on her back to unhook her bra with practiced ease. Instead of throwing it behind him like he had her shirt, he guided it between them and released it from his fingers to fall to the floor once he got to the soaked crotch of her panties. He couldn't see them, pressed tight as they were together, so he hooked a finger inside and heard her breath catch before he twisted the thin fabric as much as he could and pulled, desperate to get it away from her body. The sound ripped through his room like their breath was ripping through them and she was still watching him, her eyes wild and her hands on his shoulders.

"I hate you," she growled. It was saying something that he didn't recognize her voice because he'd heard her talk, sing, and strut around on stage a fucking _lot_ in the last two years.

His finger slid over her slick, bare skin. And he pulled back in surprise. It seemed like _someone _had gotten a little carried away at their last bikini waxing.

"No, you don't," he said confidently, pushing one, then two, then three fingers inside her. Her eyes closed and her breathing sped up. Her cheeks were flushed and he was caught between hoping she would pass out and wanting to hear every possible sound he could earn from her. "You love me and you know it." His words oozed confidence, but his actions were even more certain as he brushed his thumb over the sensitive bundle of nerves. Her eyes flew open body gave a violent shudder and thrust toward him, forcing his fingers all the way inside her.

"You're right," she panted, her eyes rolling back into her head. "Oh, _God._" She couldn't do anything else before she reared up, wrapping her arms around his neck, soaking his fingers until he felt all the evidence of her arousal starting to drip down his arm. Hell fucking yeah. It was him she was calling God. He only hoped she knew that.

He retracted his fingers and her eyes came open, barely slits and they looked almost black instead of their usual chocolate brown color. It wasn't exactly curiosity that drove him, but he pulled his fingers to his mouth and watched her as she watched him. The last fucking thing he ever expected was her strong grip on his wrist pulling his fingers to her mouth while those eyes still watched. His eyes widened at the sight. His hips were still moving against her, the motion getting more insistent as all the pressure from his anger and lust and love for her gathering right in the middle of his body. He couldn't stop moving, didn't know what would happen to him if he didn't relieve all that pressure.

Still watching her, still feeling her hot, wet tongue darting around his fingers even as her eyes were staying still and watching him, he lowered his free hand to undo his belt and flick the button on his cargo pants. Her feet guided them over the curve of his ass as much as she could, but he had to pull his hand away from her mouth to use both hands if he wanted to get them off.

Her legs were shaking, and he knew that even though she was freakishly strong, she had to be getting tired just from the force she'd been keeping up the whole time she'd been coming.

He finally pushed one hand against the wall for support, still pressing her there against the wall even as he bent his other arm and slid it under her ass to give her a little bit of relief as he pulled his hips back and then certainly pressed into her.

She always gasped a little when he did that as her body stretched and molded around him. Her gasp was a little sharper this time as he pressed harder than normal. He could already feel the huge surge of anger that had made him see red disappearing. He pulled back and pushed in again, dropping his head to her shoulder and placing a kiss at the end of her collarbone. He dragged his tongue along the slightly protruding bone and licked at the spot he had so brutally assaulted just moments before. His tongue continued its trail before he sucked her earlobe into his mouth, his teeth scraping and his tongue flipping at the tiny earring she wore.

Her heels were digging into his ass as she drove him, guiding his motion. His arm that was wrapped underneath her butt was starting to go numb as his mind short-circuited. As his arm slackened, she slipped down the wall a little bit and it forced him even further inside her. He hadn't known that possible and he couldn't keep his eyes open as she moaned his name and thrashed her head back and forth against the wall.

His breathing was starting to even out, at least just a little, from angry to just regular turned-on. He peeled her away from the wall, her slick, sweaty skin acting almost like tape. She vocalized her complaint, a slight noise.

"Sorry, babe," he said. His breathing had evened out, his temper was coming down, and he just wanted to love her now that the anger was draining. He turned around and laid her down, even as his arms wrapped all the way around her waist. Once she was settled on the bed, her eyes wide open and her chest flushed, he smiled at her. "Sorry. Seriously sorry." He buried his face in the hair that was stuck to her sweaty neck. "I love you so much."

His movements were slow at first, but she was grinding against him and making soft noises that made it impossible for him to focus.

She turned her head just enough to trace his ear with the very tip of her tongue, and even as he felt his strokes persisting, building and leading him toward the point of no return, he heard her sultry voice purring in his ear and he shuttered.

"You know I'm not done with you yet."

The double promise was more than he could handle and he gave one last, hard thrust before he came totally undone, suddenly aware of every small texture she offered—smooth, warm skin, her wet lips on that spot right under his ear, her tight nipples dragging like pebbles against his chest, and her heels rubbing against his naked ass as he pressed into her one last time with a shudder.

"Fuck, Berry," he groaned. His arms tightened even as the rest of his body fell slack.

As he pulled back, finally unwrapping an arm from her waist to brush his fingers over her forehead and move her bangs out of the way, he leaned forward and kissed her tenderly, letting his tongue do what his liquid body was no longer capable of handling.

After their kiss, he collapsed to the side. She took his hand and began tracing her fingers over his.

"You owe me a new purse," she finally said. She turned her head and he could see her small smile. "And new underwear."

He matched her smile with his. "It was worth it. Are we all good here?"

She sighed blissfully. "I don't know if I have the energy to be mad anymore. Just don't do it _ever_ again."

He slid over and gave her another kiss before he pulled away with a smirk. "I'm not making any promises." He rolled to his side and threw his arm over her stomach so he could bury his face in her hair, where he could conceivably stay for the rest of the afternoon if she'd let him.

At least when they fought they always got it right in the end.


	2. Chapter 2:  Get It Together

A/N: _Okay, so after the phenomenal response I got to the first chapter, I decided to go back and reconstruct the history of Puck/Rachel's relationship. The first part made everything so AU that I immediately began to wonder how it all would've played out to get to that point. So I'm going to do a few one-parters. I'm leaving the title as "Get It Right" because the way I see it, if they're together for most of high school that's exactly what they've done. Anyway, these are coming in no particular order and I have no idea how many of them there are. I will try to make them as hot as the first one, but we'll just have to see. So thank you for all the reviews, favorites, follows, etc. They are what made this happen so I hope anyone who keeps reading enjoys it! _

_**Song: Gravity- Sara Bareilles**_

_**Disclaimer: **__I still own nothing. I have no immediate plans for that to change. _

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**Get It Together**

They had spent Glee practice in the auditorium today, finishing out the last of this week's assignments. It had been obvious now, at the beginning of their second year, that Will Schuester had no idea what to assign. Their whole focus last year had been competition and recruiting and just staying alive and this year was different. He had settled on "Plagiarism" as a lesson and wanted them to sing about something they were learning in one of their other classes. The results had been unintentionally hilarious until Rachel was standing on the stage, all by herself save the piano player. She was always the one who was serious, almost incapable of joking even with the taste of summer still in the air.

No, Rachel Berry had far more pressing concerns. At the regional competition, Finn had told her he was in love with her right before they went on stage. It should've been a triumphant moment. She had won, then they would win, then the team would win. Instead, it threw her into total confusion that had finally resolved itself in this moment.

Because later that night, Noah had shown up at her house and thrown himself against her. He loved someone else but couldn't be with the person he loved. Not knowing about Finn's declaration, he had told Rachel he wanted to hang with someone who knew how it felt. As she watched him do what he did best, fight for something (even if it was to avoid something), her feelings for Finn grew more and more uncertain. She didn't want to become what Noah was and she had a nasty feeling that, by accepting Finn's offer of a relationship, she would eventually become that heartbroken and desperate person. After all, Finn had put her in that position before and she'd been overreacting. She knew now that he'd only slightly mislead her but she had run with the deception and blown everything out of proportion. This time, he had kind of laid it all out on the table in uncharacteristically brash manner, and just what would she do if it failed _then? _She was afraid she would fall apart.

So that second week of school, as she stood on the stage, singing her assignment—she was finally turning him down. She had to stay focused and not allow the distraction he would bring into her life. They could be friends, but she would never, ever push for more. And though they had hung out a few times over the summer, she had never actually said the words, but neither had he. They just didn't mention it.

_Something always brings me back to you_

_It never takes too long_

_No matter what I say or do,_

_I still feel you here 'til the moment I'm gone_

_You hold me without touch, you keep me without chains._

_I never wanted anything so much,_

_Than to drown in your love and not feel your rain_

They had turned on the spotlight while she was singing. The AV kids were starting to get things ready for the fall musical and were practicing during this last class period, so there had been all combination of lights on the glee kids as they sang. Although some of the combinations had been entertaining, nothing changed while Rachel was singing and they were fine-tuning the main spot. It was one of those unplanned things that actually worked out perfectly. It did make it a little harder for her to see out, so she couldn't exactly see Finn's reaction; then again, she wasn't sure she really wanted to.

_Set me free, leave me be_

_I don't wanna fall another moment into your gravity_

_Here I am, and I stand so tall_

_Just the way I'm supposed to be_

_But you're onto me, and all over me_

Noah had excused himself to go to the bathroom after he had finished a rousing cover of "Girls" by the Beastie Boys, and was frozen in the aisle. She could see him well enough because he was beyond the edge of the light. But for all the time they had spent together this summer—somehow commiserating over failed relationships without actually discussing that commonality much—she had no idea what his face was saying. The look was more intense than his usually careful mask of boredom. Her heart sank. Did he maybe think she was singing about him? And did he maybe not like that?

_You love me 'cause I'm fragile, when I thought that I was strong_

_But you touch me for a little while and all my fragile strength is gone_

She had rehearsed these words carefully but had never actually applied them to Noah. But she watched him as she sang the lines and realized in a way, they did apply to her. He had loved her all summer while she was fragile. She had been a mess trying to figure out what to do about Finn and how to balance her hopes and dreams with her wants. She had loved him while he was fragile and healing from the whole mess of his sophomore year. As much as he didn't talk about it, she knew the whole thing had really shaken him, somewhere deep down. Hanging out with her was quiet. She didn't expect him to be anything other than present, and even that was somewhat negotiable. They watched movies, they shared ice cream.

They even made out a few times and he was nice enough to ignore her tears when they were there. She had to fight the urge to smirk mid-song. He had probably just been happy he was getting any because that supply had sort of dried up once word spread he'd gotten someone pregnant. But when they made out it was…different. There was something there.

_Set me free, leave me be_

_I don't wanna fall another moment into your gravity_

_Here I am, and I stand so tall_

_Just the way I'm supposed to be_

_But you're onto me, and all over me_

She had been distracted enough, focused only on Noah because he was the only one she could really see against the harsh glare of light, but then suddenly they fit a yellow-colored cover into place over the light and the harshness was gone. Her eyes were reeling from the change a little bit and she held up a hand to block the light, but she could see the entire club including Finn. Turned out she hadn't been missing anything when she couldn't see his face. He looked stunned, but not in a good way. She turned away, unable to keep looking, and hoping it would just appear to be smooth choreography.

_I live here on my knees as I try to make you see_

_That you're everything I think I need here on the ground_

_But you're neither friend nor foe, though I can't seem to let you go_

_The one thing that I still know is that you're keeping me down_

_You're keeping me down, yeah_

_You're onto me and all over me_

She finished out the last verse by tracing her finger idly over the polished, black baby grand and leaning against the surface. The spotlight switched off suddenly as the notes dropped off. It was like a spell was broken and everyone moved a little bit.

Santana didn't even raise her hand, just blurted out. "So, like, maybe I'm stupid but I don't see what that had to do with the assignment."

"Oh." Rachel said, nodding as she stood a little straighter. "It's called Gravity. I have physics third period."

Schue laughed and the bell overhead echoed. No one else said anything about the song, but instead launched into their own quiet chatter, and they all started moving to leave except Finn. Rachel's gaze darted over to where Noah had been standing, but he was gone. She sighed and sat down on the piano bench instead of walking right into the face of the storm. Although, knowing Finn, it would at least be _quick_. He wasn't much for words and in situations like this, he seemed to have a gift to blurt out the ones that would cause maximum damage with minimum effort.

She toyed with the keys on the piano, her fingers easily finding the ones that were usually her favorite ones to belt out.

"So, that's it, huh?" He said finally. She could hear the thudding echo of hesitant footsteps on the lidded orchestra pit area.

"What?"

"That's you telling me you _don't_ love me back."

He dropped down next to her on the bench.

She sighed, hating the way her shoulders slumped and her confidence felt stripped around him. She had grown accustomed to the vulnerable feeling that she was trying to banish from her life. It was like a double wrong, of sorts. If that's what love meant, being weak and vulnerable, she just couldn't do it.

"It's not that simple," she said, still keeping her eyes down on the white piano keys. She swallowed hard, willing tears not to come and disappointment not to wash over her. She had made this decision clearly. She didn't want anything he said or did to dim that certainty now.

"Try me," he offered. He was facing the same direction she was, not looking at her either. She glanced over at him and took a deep breath, not missing the fact that his chest rose and fell with the same timing hers did.

"I have feelings for you, but I can't afford a distraction," she finally said, her voice soft enough the words held no bite. "I, um, got really caught up last year. I was so caught up in the attention from you and all the drama and my goals changed and I realize now that I can't be that girl. I can't hang my hat on a boy because I have bigger dreams to realize."

He sighed. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

She gave a weak smile as she looked at him this time and he looked over at her while she spoke. "I'm still not totally sure I'm right."

"Oh, that must be killing you," he joked lightly even though it sounded forced.

"You have no idea," she admitted with a brief smile. For some reason she'd never be able to give, her eyes flicked to the backstage area from where she sat. Puck was standing there between two of the pulled-back red curtains with his hands in his pockets. He saw that she saw him and shook his head slightly. He didn't want Finn to know he was there. So she looked back to Finn.

"I-I'm not just going to give up, Rach," Finn finally said. "I'll try not to pressure you but…these feelings aren't going anywhere. Just so you know." He stood up. "I'm not going anywhere. And we'll still be the glee leads, so…"

"There will be plenty of songs together," she concluded. She smiled. "I'll see you later." He just nodded and walked away, just happening to go off the stage opposite from where Puck was still standing and she _still _couldn't read his expression.

Considering she had spent most of the summer with him and could usually tell if he was actually bored or just pretending, if he was hungry or tired, if he was thinking something utterly evil, or if he was amused—it was disconcerting to now find herself uncertain. In a way, she longed to be let in. And that was the most disconcerting thing at all.

Before she knew what was happening, he was plopping himself down on the piano bench in the spot Finn had just vacated.

"Well I gotta hand it to you, that took balls." He said simply.

She laughed a little and shook her head. "Singing it out? No, it really didn't. If I had any _balls_," she said, her eyes narrowing as she let the slang word escape her lips against her better judgment, "I would've just told him that in person and in private."

"Are you sure it was all about Finn?"

She glanced over at him and sighed. "Yes."

"You're certain?" He said again.

Her response was more firm. "Yes."

"Good," he said, suddenly leaning forward and kissing her, his hand clamped on the back of her head to make sure she wouldn't move. She didn't respond the way he expected anyway because she just shifted on the bench and turned toward him.

Neither of them particularly wanted to break the kiss, so they didn't. As she leaned back a little, he twisted so she leaned back against the piano. She took her face in his hands as a few random notes clunked out of the middle of the keyboard. As Noah stood, he put a hand down on either side of her, the low notes and high notes giving contrasting dissonance. As he continued to press forward, she leaned back. She wasn't trying to get away but there wasn't really a comfortable angle to be had here. Finally she pulled her lips away from his.

"Seriously? You want to make out right now?" She asked, her hand flying up to her bottom lip.

"Did you hear the new rumor about me?"

She squeaked out a laugh. "That you had a vasectomy over the summer? Yes, I heard that one in a variety of incarnations."

He chuckled a little bit. "I wanted to test it out and see if they're right."

She tossed her head back, their bodies pressed so intimately together he could feel her chest heaving with her laughter. "You're such an idiot!" She said.

When her head tossed back, he moved the high collar of her shirt out of his way and stooped down just enough to place a kiss on that spot on the side of her neck. It was the one that always made her sigh and moan and wiggle just right if she were sitting in his lap. She sighed right on cue and he flicked his tongue out of his mouth to trace over the spot, feeling her pounding pulse just beneath.

"Go…go…um… go find a blanket or something so we can lay down. This is not comfortable," she stammered out as his hips moved and he rubbed up against her.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, kissing the spot one more time before he jogged off in the direction he'd come from initially. She stood up, biting her lip as she smoothed her hands over the ruffle that ran down the middle of her white, sleeveless shirt. She blew out a breath, unable to deny the fact that her cheeks (not to mention other parts of her body) were totally on fire. She raised a hand to her eyebrows again, looking at the AV room to make sure there was no motion in there. She was pretty sure the staging stuff was an actual class period and they would be gone by now.

That was about all the time she had before Puck returned with a folded blanket and as many pillows as he could carry in his hands. He tossed the pillows away before he spread the blanket out.

"This work for you?" He asked, gesturing even as she was already moving over to the corner of the stage where he stood. She stooped down to grab the pillows he had tossed, moving them until they landed actually on top of the blanket.

"It looks way more comfortable than the piano," she admitted. "It kinda looks like that scene from the Notebook."

He nodded, but the look on his face said he plainly didn't know what she was talking about, nor did he particularly care. He reached a hand out to her and she took it before they sat down on the blanket, side by side.

"So…" she said slowly, watching him and he looked at her. His gaze was just a little too intense, a little too predatory for her comfort. "Where were we?"

He leaned into her, letting her position herself with her head on one of the pillows even though they were sideways on the blanket so their feet hung off.

This was technically the most compromising position they'd ever actually been in, but she knew as soon as he started kissing her that she didn't want him to stop. It was like all the restraint she had put into their makeout sessions was because of the Finn factor that had been hanging over her head. Without that factor, she felt more like exploring. She stretched her legs out beneath him, but moved them just a little so his knees were resting on the ground.

As much as she knew he would've loved more in some ways, he had never actually pressured her for more. And they had never, ever talked about any of it. He wasn't like Finn who would abruptly bolt from a making out with a lame excuse or stare at her for a reaction after they kissed. He seemed to sense the ebb and flow of desire from her, seemed to read any signals she was unintentionally giving, and he knew exactly when to back off and when to (no pun intended) push forward.

That's why it didn't really surprise her to feel his fingers dancing at the middle of her chest at the same time her hands wandered over the firm curve of his butt to press his body more intimately against hers. She realized he was undoing the buttons on her shirt and she didn't care.

Well, okay. Maybe she cared a little but only in the sense that she was pretty self-conscious about her body.

Something about her breathing must've changed because he pulled back. "Is this not okay?"

"I've just never…I don't..I…"

He nodded. "You just need to trust me," he said simply, keeping his eyes locked on hers as he finished undoing the buttons on her shirt. It fell open uselessly, the silken fabric sliding against her bra and away from her body as her chest heaved. His eyes slipped from hers, down to her chest and back up.

As she met his wandering glance, she saw something; something that took her breath away even more than it was already gone. She had never really seen someone look at her like that before. He was looking at her like she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen and he had to have her. In that single glance, she realized she owned him. He would do whatever she wanted, even if it killed him, and he would do it willingly. She kind of enjoyed the rush of power.

She finally just nodded. He nodded back and then lowered his face to press open-mouthed kisses to her chest and her stomach. Her bra clasped in the front and he used his teeth and tongue to undo it, leaving a wet spot in between her breasts that made her think he had somehow used his tongue to set her on fire. She brought her hands up to the back of his head, feeling the prickly texture of his short hair with her sensitive fingers before she closed her eyes to hang on. He twisted his head to one side, then the other, and lavished the same detailed attention to each of her nipples, earning every moan she issued beyond her control.

The rush of power was gone; she was putty in his hands. And judging by his confident smirk when he pulled his face away from her skin, he knew it.

"Did you know?" He said simply. She scowled her confusion. "This isn't a new feeling for me, Berry."

"What isn't?" She asked, still confused. And she knew how sex had the power to make people so dumb.

He took her hand and lowered it to the obvious bulge in his pants. She widened as she squeezed and his eyes widened too. It was so…hard. She flattened her hand out and rubbed it against the zipper of his shorts and his eyes fell closed.

"Jesus," he gasped out.

Oh, she totally had the power. She grinned.

"You really want me?" She asked. Her heart rate kicked up a notch as she palmed at the fly of his pants again. She felt his head moving against her chest as he nodded. She was gathering all her courage as she twisted her fingers together to pinch at his zipper and tug it down. "Then take me." She gulped after she said it, nervously waiting for his reaction.

She didn't have to wait long. He reached his hands up under her skirt to pull her panties down, and while he was at her ankles, he sat up long enough to undo his belt and drop his shorts. She watched him uncertainly. As he reached behind him to pull the shorts off his thick, muscular legs, he pulled his wallet out of the back. He unfolded it, plucked a condom from inside and tossed it down beside her before he threw the wallet back over his shoulder to the small pile of clothing at his feet.

He slid back up her body, breathing hard and using his tongue for every conceivable inch of movement he made. As he settled back on top of her, he wrapped his arms around her to hold her close.

"Are you sure?" He asked finally, his eyes intent and what was inside them intense. "Like really, really sure?"

"Do you care?" She asked, pressing the words out against her better judgment.

Something else flashed in his eyes and his jaw hardened. " 'Course I do or we wouldn't be here."

She nodded uncertainly as she watched him. "Good." She pulled her legs out from under him, settling her feet on either side of his bare calves so that he was pressed directly against her. "I care too, you know."

He leaned his face down, sick of talking, and kissed her warmly. Her skirt was twisted up around her waist and they were pressed together so intimately, the warm and damp pressed against the hot and hard, and he even still he took his time kissing her gently and thoroughly, his tongue finally finding that spot on her neck. He used his tongue and his lips on that one spot, his hands brushing over her bare breast, until her eyes slipped closed and she let out a breathy moan. "Noah…"

He dropped his face, unable to concentrate when she said his name like that. He had been called a lot of things in bed, but never his actual name. It was overwhelming. He was still internally trying to decide if he really wanted to be responsible for devirginizing her. He had kind of figured at this point he would leave that mess up to Hudson and then entertain dirty fantasies in his head. He had no idea how to expect this sudden change of events.

She used her hands to bring his face up to hers. "Please?"

He wasn't about to admit that he was nervous. Fuck, no. He didn't feel like he might throw up. And he certainly hadn't put any energy into the idea that this might hurt her. Nope, not even a little.

He pulled back from her just a little. It was the first time ever that he was a little bit ashamed of his sexual history. She was…different. He didn't remember ever giving it a second thought before, but here he was second guessing all over the place. He sighed, looking at her underneath him. He covered his indecision by reaching for a pillow that was off to the side of them. "Lift up for a second."

She must've been pretty far gone, pretty nervous herself, because she did at she was told. He smiled a little bit as he tucked the pillow underneath her and she rested her butt right on top of it.

"Do I even want to know where you got this thing from?" She joked weakly. He settled back on top of her and grinned.

"No, but I'm pretty sure I'll be taking it home," he joked back and he finally grinned.

She laughed. "You're going to want a souvenir that badly, huh?"

He didn't tell her that he wanted one because he wasn't sure something like this would ever happen to him again. He just smiled and the spark, the one that made her feel beautiful and adored, was back. She smiled, too, and ran a hand over his arm.

"Are you…._nervous_?" She asked doubtfully as her fingers danced up in his shirt and over his spine.

It was one of about three moments of total honesty in his entire life, and at least two of those moments had been with her. What was it about this girl? "Don't tell anyone, okay?"

"My lips are sealed," she whispered as his eyes roamed her face. He leaned down and kissed her again, getting really into it as their hips moved in time against each other. He had literally kissed her stupid, she had no idea how long they had been there or really where they were, when he slid a hand down over her body and between them.

She thought she knew what he was going to do, but she was surprised to feel one of his fingers slide into her. He crooked it a little bit and she felt her muscles tense around it. Her eyes fell closed and she let out a breathy gasp. He pulled it out and added another finger. Her next gasp was louder. He smiled and watched her, writhing against his hand with her eyes closed, her mouth open, her cheeks flushed.

He moved his hips slightly so he could get a better angle with his hands and then pressed his thumb against the bundle of nerves just inside her.

"God, Noah…" she panted, her head twisting to the side. This part, the part where they started panting, was his favorite. With her, it was off the charts and his erection bulged against her thigh, the warm contact turning him on so much more that he thought he was going to lose it. For the first time in his life, he wanted a bucket of cold water or something. He didn't want this to end.

Because then it would just be _over_.

He flicked his wrist two more times and she came undone, moving her hips and saying—rather loudly—something that sounded like _I love you_. He chose to ignore it, not ready to actually relate love and sex just yet.

He retracted his hand to retrieve the condom, quickly unwrapping it and then wrapping his full length up before he settled back on top of her.

Her eyes were open now, but he could tell by the slight movement in her legs and her chest that she wasn't even coming _down_ yet. She couldn't speak, couldn't move, couldn't do anything but stare and God, was that stare the hottest look he'd ever seen on her.

"Now what?" He asked, pressing a kiss to her lips to give her time to try formulating an answer.

"Please," she gasped out, her throat sounding dry even as she swallowed roughly. "Please, Noah…"

"Please what?" He asked. She didn't say the words, but she gave him a look he knew he would see behind his eyelids for many nights to come. He nodded and swiveled his hips expertly to line everything up before he pressed forward just a little bit.

"You still sure?" He asked.

She was shaking now, and he pressed a kiss to her forehead as she nodded. He inched forward and she didn't move. He thrust forward one more time, feeling himself go all the way this time, finally hitting bottom and she grunted lightly. He closed his eyes tightly, feeling the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead that came as he tried so hard not to back out and thrust again. He wanted to make sure she was okay first. She wiggled beneath him.

As he pulled back a little, he grabbed both her hands and brought them up, fingers all tangled in his, to pin them over her head. She had moved enough that as she tossed her head back this time, it went over the top of the pillow and hit the hard floor of the stage. She didn't say anything, her eyes still squeezed tightly shut as he began moving his hips in earnest, unsurprised when she started moving hers, too. He leaned down to press his lips to her exposed neck, feeling the rush of wetness surround him when he clamped his mouth to her neck again and sucked lightly. He kept both her hands pinned above her head in one of his and reached his other hand down to feel the outside of her thigh and hip. Her skin was so soft he sank his fingers into it.

She got what he was going for and lifted her leg a little more, allowing him to sink deeper. He could still feel the aftershocks from her orgasm all down his length when he was pressed inside her and he knew he wasn't going to be able to pay attention to what he was doing anymore because he was _so close_. His whole body was tightening up and he decided to just go for broke, muttering the words against the skin of her throat.

"I think I love you," he said in a rush. The words poured out just as his own orgasm slammed into him with the force of a freight train and he lost his fingers in her hair, clamped to her own hand, and he lost control of his voice as he grunted out a whimper he wasn't sure he'd ever actually made before.

They lay tangled up together for a long time until their breathing evened out and their fingers went numb from holding on so tight.

He rolled off just to the side of her, never totally breaking contact, and reached behind him to fold the unoccupied half of the blanket over them. She wasn't completely covered by it, but then again, she didn't exactly have her bare ass hanging out like he did, either.

His fingers were still tangled in her hair and he rubbed at the top of her head. "You okay?"

Her eyes were closed and she turned her head to look at him before she opened them partway. "To be determined," she said softly. She flipped her left hand out so it bumped against his abdomen. She sighed and gave him a small smile before she licked her lips. "I won't tell anyone what you said, either."

"You didn't hear anything," he said, intending to say it sharply so he could try to sound like a badass instead of an overwhipped pussy, but his heart was still pounding in his chest and he just couldn't muster up the bravado. He had a really, really hard time faking around her.

She grinned adorably and her eyes slipped closed. "So you lived up to half your reputation."

He raised an eyebrow, propping his head up on his palm before he responded. "Just half of it?"

"You got the love 'em down." Her eyes were still closed and her smile faded. "What about the leave 'em?"

He swallowed hard. For all his thoughts about how different this time was, he must not have actually proven that to her. And she had done it anyway, which seemed way out of anything he ever thought about her. And it was fucking phenomenal, but… well, that part he had kind of suspected would be the case. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, licking his lips on the salty flavor that was unlike her. "I'm good right where I'm at."

She didn't say anything but her faint little grin returned and her breathing continued to even out as he watched her.

"And _you_…" he started, keeping his voice low. They really did have to get going before someone inevitably came into the auditorium. He could only hope it would be stupid Jew Fro with a fucking video camera or some shit.

"What about me?" She asked in a sleepy sigh.

"Figures your first time would be _on a stage_," he grumbled, pressing one last kiss to her forehead as she started to laugh.

"Yeah…" she said simply. "So where's the second time going to be?"

As she continued to shake with her impish laughter, he dropped his head into the crook of her shoulder and suddenly he knew that all the other girls, all the bullshit drama, all the faked friendships—they were just practice for this. This was the real thing. He was finally starting to get it together.


	3. Chapter 3: Get It Over With

_**A/N: **__I'm so overwhelmed and thankful for all the attention from this story. The number of hits alone just messes with my head. So thank you for the ego boost! Of course, I'm most grateful for replies and I would love to hear what you think. I'm open to suggestions if there's something you want me to write, drop me a line and let me know. So, um, sorry there is no smut in this part, but there is other fun to be had in a Puck/Rachel relationship, right? This one is a little more serious than the others but I hope you like it just the same._

_**Disclaimer: **__I own nothing Glee-related except season one on DVD._

* * *

**Get It Over With**

Puck sighed as he raised his hand to knock on the front door. And he dropped it—_again_—for the fifth time in what felt like as many seconds. First up, he didn't normally knock. Not at Rachel's house. They had hung out a few times over the last few months, more than a few times, and not even in the way that involved fucking. They watched movies. So what if some of the popcorn usually ended up down her shirt? He had really stellar fucking aim. They had dinner with her dads. Her dads thought he was nice and polite. So what if he barely said a word because he was afraid he couldn't open his mouth without saying the f-word or finding a twisted way to insult their daughter, thus provoking their undeniable rage? He knew the bigger one would probably kill him. They sometimes played games, but almost all of them ended in some sort of offered and denied prostitution. It seemed like maybe offering to exchange a railroad for a blowjob during Monopoly had been the last straw, and yeah they hadn't played games for a while.

No, today was totally different and he really fucking wished it wasn't. Shit, if this were even six months ago, he wouldn't have felt obligated to tell her one goddamn thing. He must really be losing his touch.

_Puck! You mean to tell me you didn't know who adopted our daughter? It's not a totally closed adoption._

Quinn's disbelieving words were in his head and made his ears ring and his guts turn over. He didn't want to be the one to tell her. He really, really hadn't wanted that fucking honor dropped in his overqualified lap. And just why in the hell was he always the bearer of bad news? He smirked. Yeah, he totally knew it was because he caused a lot of the bad shit to rain down.

This was totally different.

He sighed and raised his hand again, but was still shocked when the door yanked open. Rachel was standing before him wearing nothing but a fairly tight tanktop and a really small skirt—and smirk that was bigger than her entire wardrobe. Fuck, when did she get a rack?

He shook his head and yanked his eyes back up to her face. "Hey."

"Hey, Noah. I wasn't expecting you today, and from the looks of the new rut in our front porch, I would say you weren't actually expecting to knock on the door."

"Why the hell are you home anyway?" He grumbled. "Didn't you have some stupid-ass audition or something other?"

"This morning," she agreed. "But three in the afternoon isn't exactly morning, is it?"

"Depends on when you go to bed." He said, resting his hands on his hips. His heart was thumping like it was going to make a leap for it out of his throat.

She nodded. "Well, I suppose that's true," she gave a small laugh and shook her head. "Maybe you should come in and get off your feet. You know, since you had a long night."

"Of course I did," he agreed.

"Uh-huh," she said mockingly. "That's why Finn came over around eight and said you'd already bailed on the 'epic video game marathon of the summer'." She moved out of the way so he could come inside and then closed the door behind him.

"Dads?" He asked questioningly.

"Work," she answered simply. "Which means I'm probably not supposed to have boys over, but they might make an exception for the quiet Jew."

He rolled his eyes. "Are you ever going to stop fucking teasing me about that?"

"Sure," she agreed. "When I find something better."

"You might've deserved every single slushie I gave you."

"And you might deserve every STD and illegitimate child you ever get," she muttered sweetly as she led the way down to their basement.

Okay, so maybe they hung out more than a few times because this was the accepted routine. Instead of trying to come out his throat, his heart made a dive to his stomach. He needed to get this over with, but if there was one thing he knew about girls, it was that you couldn't just blurt stuff like this. Of course, his usual method of softening them up with some making out first probably wasn't going to fly in this case.

She turned to him. "Well, I'm glad you stopped by because I decided on a new activity for us."

He grimaced openly. He could only imagine what she had come up with. "If it involves feathers, I'm out."

She shook her head. "No. It involves you teaching me how to play a stupid video game."

He raised his eyebrows. That wasn't what he was thinking.

"Are you high?"

She rolled her eyes. "No. And to be perfectly honest, I have no interest in it, but Finn mentioned that we have a decent setup down here for some sort of a video gaming marathon. He thinks it would help us unite the glee club to do something like that over here on a regular basis while school is out and social factors aren't as concerning as normal."

"So have him teach you," he said, flinging himself onto the leather couch that sat opposite the large, wall-mounted plasma screen television.

She eyed him surreptitiously. She had mentioned Finn, which seemed to be a sore subject since she'd mentioned Finn's pre-regionals admission to her. Puck had then said he was just waiting for her to ditch out on him to go get some ass. Apparently, when mentioning Finn, she had to sugar-coat it with some ego stroking. This was not going to be easy.

She sat down next to him, a little closer than she would have for a movie, and tucked her legs up underneath her. The cool leather gave her goosebumps a little bit but she persisted.

"I want you to do it," she said. "I think you're a way better person for the job."

He looked over at her suspiciously. "Yeah, fucking right. You're just afraid you'll jump Hudson's bones."

She gave a little shrug. "I'm a master of self-control, Noah." She tilted her head. "How do you explain the fact that I've been hanging out with all summer and I haven't jumped your bones yet?"

He snorted in amusement as he looked over at her. Jesus, if she was turning on the charm, she must want it pretty bad. It's not like actual flirting was one of her specialties. You also can't bullshit a bullshitter and he knew exactly what she was doing.

Quinn's revelation edged back in just as he was about to give into her chocolate-brown eyes, looking up at him all huge and beautiful and hopeful. She wasn't even trying to give him the eyes, but he was still distracted long enough that he knew he just had to get it over with.

He shifted on the couch just a little bit so he could see her better. She frowned a little bit at the intense look on his face.

"Okay, so I have to tell you something," he said abruptly. "And it really sucks. Like it really, really sucks so we might have to make out so you'll feel better."

She dropped her hands into her lap, tilting her head with concentration and a serious expression.

"So I was taking some money to Quinn earlier to help her with medical bills." He started. "That shit's so expensive I think it'll take us the next decade to pay it off." She swallowed and narrowed her eyes a little. "Anyway, she and I got to talking and…" he shrugged and looked away. There was no way in hell he wanted to see the look on her face when she caught his drift. "Well, you know Beth was adopted by a single mother and we were totally okay with that because we picked her profile at the adoption agency."

"Right," Rachel said, sitting back on her heels a little more.

"Well, she lives in Indiana now. She'll actually go to Carmel High School if she still lives there when she grows up."

Rachel's face was the picture of confusion. "What does this have to do with me, Noah? I mean, you know I care about it, but…

"Shelby is the one who adopted her," he finally admitted. He kept his chin down, twisting his hands in his lap and waited. Yeah, he definitely preferred to warm up to bad news with making out first.

There was a long stretch of silence. She had been kind of broken up when she talked about Shelby, and it really hadn't happened much anyway. He had been particularly angry about a child support check from his dad that didn't show (like that was a shock) to enable his mom to pay for football; he had been halfway lit when he showed up at her house, ranting and raving about shitty parents.

And she had almost instantly put him to shame with her quiet words. _At least he wanted you for a while._

He looked sideways at her, and she was just doing that staring thing she did. Rachel could be the most dramatic, most in-your-face person in the world, so when something left her speechless, it was a really big fucking deal. And for the record, it was terrible to be on the other end of that silence and he never wanted to be that dude again.

There was a sharp intake of breath and her soft, almost squeaky voice. "Thank you for telling me." She switched her gaze over to him. "Do you think you could go now?"

He raised an eyebrow. Had this been some other chick, some other crazy chick no less, he would've been out the door so fast he would've left a puff of smoke behind him. This time though, he just shook his head. "No."

She raised her hands up out of her lap to cover her face and choked out two or three sobs before he could pull her next to him. He really fucking hated it when girls cried. He didn't know where to put his hands. He had actually asked his mom once, but somehow the comfort his mom had wanted when she found out his dad was really not coming back—again—seemed a little different than what Rachel would require.

Again, he was all about comfort kissing. And sex. The friendshippy, good-guy stuff? That's what dopes like Hudson were for. Maybe he should call him. Except for while they were commiserating about shitty parent-related stuff, she had specifically said she never talked about it with Finn. Sure, he knew about the situation in part because Mercedes had blabbed it to everyone. Even an idiot like Finn could've spotted Rachel's visible flinch when Mercedes said it. But Rachel had blown it all off and continued on, seeming to be unaffected. There was no way he could call Finn because it would just embarrass her worse. And he would in no way be able to explain why he was here, why he'd felt the nagging need to tell her himself and in person. No, calling Finn would be bad.

About that moment, it dawned on him that she wasn't exactly friends with anyone else in glee club. He was pretty glad he'd refused to leave her alone. That relief still didn't answer the question about what to do with his hands. He settled for locking his wrists around her shoulders. Hands not touching her... he looked down to make sure there wasn't other body contact. Her head was pressed into his chest but that was it.

It was a good long while before she even moved. There was no way on earth she was comfortable and that's how he knew she was really upset. Plus, if he wasn't mistaken, his shirt was getting soaked. Crying enough tears to soak through a beater was pretty sad, really. He felt helpless. He was starting to get a little antsy, but there was no way he was going to move until she did. He relaxed his arms a little bit and brought a hand up to where her hair covered her ear.

He knew there were times in your life when you just wanted to hear that everything would be fine. He turned his head, hoping those would be the magic words to turn her off (and holy shit if he'd ever thought those terms with a woman in his arms before). He caught the smell of her shampoo, the perfect blend of fruity and flowery. It drew him in like a magnet and…really, Puck? Smelling her hair? Shit, this had eighth grade written all over it. He quickly pressed a kiss to the top of her head and got out of there. He was looking forward, his eyes landing on the television as his mind raced and tried to think of anything to help her. Oh, yeah. He'd forgotten his false promise.

"It's okay," he said, moving his hand slowly. "Everything will be okay."

The words felt as empty leaving as he was dead sure they felt hitting her ears. She didn't say anything and she still didn't move.

At some point, his leg started to go numb. That's when he wished one of her dads would come home soon. Not that he had any plans to go anywhere but because they would at least be able to take action. He didn't do so well with sitting quietly and waiting around. He had accepted this about himself, and thought maybe it was one of the reasons he and Rachel were getting a good start on a friendship—she had her own crazy brand of ADHD that seemed to go along with his. Even when he decided to teach her how to shoot a basketball. Even when miniature golfing with his little sister sounded 'fun, I guess.' And even tagging along once during her weekly voice lessons with the quad friend she visited. That guy had looked vaguely familiar.

Finally, he was unable to take it for a minute longer. When he spoke, though, his voice was low and his words were a hundred percent more sincere. "Tell me what to do?" He said. "I'll do anything."

Her breaths shuddered and she sat up and by God she looked the saddest he had probably ever seen anyone. She pulled her hands up to her face and wiped at her cheeks, although it didn't look like it did a whole lot of good. "I'm sorry. I'm so embarrassed."

He shook his head. "Hey, you know, you can lose your shit with me. God only knows I've done it to you enough the last little while."

"Do you need a drink? I'm just going to get some water."

"No, thanks. At least not the kind of drink you're offering." He flashed a quick grin. "But sit down, I'll go grab it."

She shook her head. "Honestly, Noah. Thank you but I'm perfectly capable."

And she was gone. He looked around the basement, desperate for an idea. The only thing he could come up with a movie. He sighed and went over to the wall mounted shelves that housed their very large and mostly musical DVD collection. And no, it hadn't escaped his attention that the entire bottom two shelves were dedicated to Rachel's various performances. But he looked for something a little closer to eye level. He almost wished he'd paid attention to some of the crap she made him watch. Then again, he was okay with not. When was he ever going to need to know this shit?

How about like, now, dumbass?

He sighed and ran a finger over the movies, finally landing on Funny Girl. He knew they had watched this and he really knew she had been happy because she sang along. With the damn movie. No, he never found that irritating.

Okay, so it was cute in its own way.

He pulled it off the rack and easily navigated the setup they had so that the movie was starting by the time she came back down stairs holding two bottles and a plate with something he knew there was no fucking way she'd ever eat.

"Aw, honey. You baked." He teased, but he couldn't fight the grin that sprung up when he saw her smile.

"My dad—the one with the heart problems no less—has some secret fetish for Pizza Rolls. It sounded like a snack you would appreciate," she offered. "And I am not your honey."

He laughed out loud, a real honest to God laugh, and pressed a kiss to her cheek. The kiss was made all the more nasty by the fact that he had grabbed one of the pocket snacks and eaten it before, but was still chewing it when his lips brushed against her face. She sat almost as far from him on the couch as she could get. But she wasn't crying and she was slipping him amused glances as he downed pizza rolls two at a time while she sipped her water.

The music from the surround sound speakers eventually caught her attention. "Funny Girl?"

He shrugged. "It was scary. I tried to think like you. Trust me, it will never _ever_ happen again."

Instead of a comeback, all she offered was a very small "Thank you, Noah."

He thought he might be in the all clear because she stayed sitting on her side of the couch, watching the movie intently even as she mouthed along with the music, for almost the entire thing. She seemed shocked when he pointed to the screen during the song she'd whipped out of her back pocket at sectionals the previous year, and even smiled a little when he'd said it. She relaxed and lay down, using his thigh for a pillow, and he had to admit that it was actually kinda nice.

But then it started again. First it was a sniffle. She wiped at her nose. Then another sniffle. Then she dabbed at her eyes. By the time the title track (and he wanted to yank his own balls right off for even knowing which one it was) ended, her head was buried _in his lap_ and she was crying again. This was more problematic with the hands. He hooked one arm over the back of the couch and let his other hand tickle idly with the hair that had fallen around her face. He watched her with a frown and then caught her words and felt his heart leap up into his throat again.

_Why doesn't she want me?_

He had to admit, it had crossed his mind that his dad had found a new family. What if he found out one day that he had? He would be fucking livid and murderous and…well, that's just to say it would all be very bad.

But even what he had was a little better, wasn't it? Sure, his dad had walked out—just fucking walked right out the door and never came back through it—but there were still ways he could imagine him. There were hypothetical situations where he thought if he just ran into his dad and found out something excusable had happened, maybe everything would just be okay. Rachel, instead, had just been shut down. She'd had to watch her mother, who actually looked like her and sounded like her in a lot of ways, tell her that no—she didn't want her, she wanted a brand new baby she could love from scratch.

And she couldn't tell her dads because the whole thing had violated a contract and they would get all sue-happy.

Even from the depths of the basement, he could hear the faint sound of the doorbell ringing.

It seemed mean to talk too loud. He didn't know why exactly, but…yeah. The room was kind of like a fucking musical tomb so he talked softly. "Rach…there's someone at the door."

She didn't move her head but she looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "Will you get rid of whoever it is?"

"Okay," he agreed. Because it seemed like the right thing to do, he leaned down and kissed the side of her head. "I'll be right back." He rose and she tipped up onto her knees.

"You don't have to stay," she said sadly. As he looked at her, he knew the terrible truth—no one had ever stayed. She had probably spent a lot of time crying by herself with some random and sappy musical playing, in this huge house and all alone. There was no way in hell he was going to be someone else who left her.

He rolled his eyes. "I'll be right back."

Fuck his luck, it was Finn at the door.

Finn looked confused.

"What are you doing here?" He looked around, his eyes scanning the inside of the house. "Where's Rachel?"

Puck sighed. It was really just a matter of time. "I can't answer your first question because it doesn't have an answer. Rachel is downstairs." Finn just nodded and stepped forward, but Puck held his hand out and it pressed against Finn's chest. "Wait up. She's pretty upset."

"Do I even want to know what you did?" Finn asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No, if I did it do you think I'd still be here? Witness protection or some shit." Puck flipped a glance over his shoulder but the house was still. "No, she just got some shitty news. But she told me to get rid of whoever was at the door."

Finn swallowed hard and nodded. He didn't want to walk in on the pacing, crying, dramatic, freaking out mess that was probably Rachel being upset. But he couldn't just leave, either. He frowned and proceeded into the house. Puck noticed a grocery sack in his hand.

"What's that?" He pointed to it even though Finn was walking in front of him.

"X-Box," Finn said simply, knowing what Puck had been asking about even as he turned to try and go upstairs toward Rachel's room.

"No, she's downstairs," Puck said. He ended up ahead of Finn but felt free to smirk. _Teach me how to play video games._ Finn wasn't as dumb as he sometimes seemed.

At the same time, something had changed between Puck and Rachel this afternoon. He wanted to make sure she was okay, but there was like a competitive edge to it. Fuck if he would let Hudson outdo him and earn the first smile from her this afternoon. No, he would work on it all day if he could see that grin and know his words hadn't broken her.

Rachel turned her head, the thunder of more than one set of footsteps on the stairs earning her attention. She had started the movie at Don't Rain on My Parade once he had gone, wanting something to take her mind off everything. Cribbing performance notes was the best thing she could think of, but she had no intention of going toward the title track yet. If she was really going to bury all the unchecked emotion she had about Shelby Corcoran, she would have to find some new material for sure.

Anyway, she turned her head to look at the door. She had been perfectly explicit, she thought, when she told Noah to send whoever was at the door away. She was a total mess. She was utterly embarrassed that even he had seen her like this, let alone anyone else. Her pride had taken too many hits today.

So when she saw Finn appear right behind Noah, her eyes widened and she turned around to face front. She heard the clunk of Finn setting something down on the coffee table and then he was standing right in front of her. She looked up, feeling small and totally pathetic where she was curled and slumped into the rich brown leather.

"Hey," he said, his voice soft and low. She really did love his voice. The couch bounced as Noah reclaimed his former spot.

"He-hey," she offered unsteadily. Her eyes slid over to Noah and she had to admit, if she loved Finn's voice, she loved the concerned look on Noah's face even more. Maybe she wouldn't have to kill him for letting someone else in. She reached a hand up to wipe at her cheeks, certain her face was bright red and knowing there were still some errant tears escaping.

Finn watched her with a frown. "Puck said you got some bad news. You okay?"

She swallowed and looked up at him with her fingers still lingering on her face. "I'll be fine," she said simply. "What brings you by?"

He scowled but it wasn't angry. "I told you I'd be by after dinner so we could work on the video games thing. I tried to make sure it was still okay, but…"

She sat up a little straighter. "Oh…oh. What time is it?" She asked, sounding totally confused.

"A little after seven," Finn admitted. "But I can come back if you want. I thought your dads would be home by now."

She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut as she sniffled a little bit. She had a major headache coming on. "Umm…what day is it?"

"Wednesday," Finn offered simply.

Rachel frowned. "Oh, no they won't be home 'til later then."

Puck looked over at Finn. "Right. Well…I'm getting you something to eat then."

"No, really I'm…"

"Eating," he said firmly. "If I have to shove every bite into your big, big mouth. Got it?"

Finn looked at him uncertainly, wondering how Rachel might react to so much force. She just laughed and Finn visibly relaxed and then moved to start setting up the video game console as Puck pulled out his cell phone. Given the amount his mom worked and he was on his own with his little sister for dinner, he had the pizza place on speed dial and their menu memorized, so he whipped his phone out of his pocket. He bypassed the sext from Santana that had come in at some point and pressed the phone to his ear, still easily catching the remote Finn flung at him while he was placing their dinner order. He could've sworn the fucker was aiming for his head.

Rachel also caught hers easily and then she scooted to the middle of the long couch, leaving Finn the spot on the end.

He clicked the end button his phone and looked over at her. "Food will be here in 45 minutes. You're buying, right?" He teased, even though his family had a tab with the pizza place.

"We can turn it into a bet and you can buy when I destroy you at this video game."

Wait, what? Rachel Berry was trying her hand at trash talk. He looked down and laughed.

"Okay, but you'll have to turn your controller around first. But nice try."

Finn was getting settled on the couch as the main screen theme for Madden picked up and started issuing through the speakers.

"You brought a football game?" Rachel asked. "I thought you wanted me to learn how to blow something up."

Finn laughed as he grabbed the controller she was clutching like a lifeline and turned it around so the buttons were facing up in her grip. "You've gotta walk before you can run."

"I thought you ran to play football," she asked, looking between the two boys and looking totally confused.

"Shit, dude," Puck said, looking over her head at Finn. "We have our work cut out for us, don't we?"


	4. Chapter 4: Get It Out

_**A/N:**__ Thanks for all the interest in this story. It's so much fun to write that it's basically doing it on its own. Just a brief note about the songs used in the mashup: first is Secret by Maroon 5 and second is What's Love Got to Do With It by Tina Turner. Because I can't link to specific YouTube videos here, I will say the idea of combining these songs was not my own, but something Maroon 5 has been performing in concert. I did rearrange the lyrics to fit my purposes. But if you want to hear it (and you should watch it because Adam Levine is so hot he'll make your tongue melt in the video I watched), go do it. The one I watched was a concert in Bristow, VA in August. _

_**Disclaimer:**__I don't own Glee, otherwise they would be able to sing dirtier stuff like this. _

* * *

**Get It Out**

Puck leaned carefully against the open door of Rachel's locker and swung it slightly so he could talk right in her ear. "Mornin'", he drawled slowly.

She turned her head slightly, but was otherwise engaged loading her bag with books and stuff for the next couple class periods. "Fifth period is not exactly morning." He couldn't mistake her tone of voice or slight smile.

"So…two more classes 'til glee," he said conversationally.

"Oh, good. You remembered the eight comes last." She sounded distracted as she looked through the bag to make sure she had everything.

"Ha. Ha ha." He said, his voice dry as she reached up to gently remove the locker door from his grasp before she shut it and twisted the lock. "You think you're so funny."

He moved in time with her as she started walking down the hallway. "No. Just honest," she said with a shrug. Her voice was slightly higher than normal and yes, he definitely noticed.

So he had given her something other than a daily injection of Puck for the last weekend; apparently he'd given her his last shred of man-ity, because he noticed shit like her tone of voice. He sighed, too. "Just not honest enough to come out of the closet."

She rolled her eyes and turned to come to a stop. "I'm not a lesbian."

"Oh, trust me, _I know_." He said firmly. He dropped his voice as she yanked him into the vacant classroom she had stopped at. She pulled him inside and now her voice was not high, but was more of a low hiss.

"We talked about this. We agreed." Her eyes shifted around the room, making sure it was actually vacant as she continued. "You have a reputation to uphold and I have damage control to do with glee club. I can't look fickle to them."

"How does lying help with that?" He asked, confused; dude, he had just asked probably the most brutally honest person he'd ever met in his life that question. What the fuck was the world doing? What was this girl doing to him?

"You're telling me you want to admit what…what…" as she struggled for words, he thought he might have a rough idea what the problem here was. "We don't even know what's going on outside of sex. Maybe we should ponder on that for a bit before we even entertain the possibility of attempting to explain it to our friends."

"You think there's something going on outside of sex?" He asked, his cocky smile starting to spread across his face. "I mean…I… really?"

She sighed and put her hand on his arm. "I don't really know what's going on, I just know that instead of taking time to figure it all out like I did with Finn, I just kind of jumped you." She looked down. "Now I just have to figure out _why_ and what it is about you. But there's definitely something."

She kissed his cheek and left right quick because she didn't want to be late for class. He didn't want to be a girl and think about all the relationship shit, so he actually went to class. He made it to two classes in a row. Even his teachers seemed surprised to see him. One of them asked for his name.

Glee hadn't come fast enough, but as soon as he saw Finn giving him the stink eye from the back row of the choir room, he thought maybe he'd been a little too excited to get here. Even Rachel hadn't arrived yet.

Well, he had no fucking idea what he'd done to get on Hudson's bad side already. Football was just starting up, so it had nothing to do with game performance. They hadn't hung in a while, so there was no sort of video game shit talk to be had. They had worked through (ignored) all the Quinn stuff over the summer and it had slowly gotten less awkward at least. That was something. So what the fuck was his pansy-assed problem now?

He knew Rachel wasn't going to sit by either of them. He might as well go figure it out. He ambled up the steps to the back row and sat down next to him.

"What's the problem, dude?" Puck said. He was starting to learn that maybe it worked better, maybe it was more badass, to just be straight up about this stuff.

Finn huffed out a breath and sat up in his seat, leaning forward. Puck noticed the look on his face change and Puck let his gaze wander to the door. Rachel had just come in.

"I saw you, all right?" Finn said quietly.

"Saw me…" Puck asked, lowering his voice. Rachel's eyes had flickered up to them and he could sense just by how stiff her motion was that she didn't believe this conversation was innocent.

"After class on Friday, I talked to Rachel for a minute in the auditorium and she was just hanging out at the piano. Well, I forgot my bag when I left so I went back to get it."

Puck felt the bottom drop of out of his stomach. "And…" Just because he _knew _didn't mean he was going to just outright confess to anything.

"How long has it been going on?"

"What?"

Finn looked at him with an angry stare. "I've said it before and I hate repeating myself. Don't play dumb—you're too fucking dumb to play dumb."

Puck sighed. "What do you really want me to say?"

Finn shook his head and looked back up to the front of the room. "I don't know." Rachel was arranging music and doing the "captain's" duties. "But I'm done, man. I'm fucking done with you. I'm over your stupid game-playing bullshit."

"Wait, hold up. You assume I'm playing her?"

"Given the five minutes it took you to talk your way into her pants, yeah," Finn said, his low voice still sharp. As various glee club members were entering the room, they were all eyeing the two boys curiously. Although they hadn't come to blows, it was pretty obvious from their posture that the conversation was serious.

"It's not like that," Puck said. They weren't looking at each other now, but were both staring at Rachel. She was trying to keep tabs on them subtly, her hands busy sorting music even as her eyes were on them.

"Whatever it's like, it's like this: she's worth it. I love her. I _really_ love her. And I'm just waiting for you to drop the ball."

He'd barely admitted it to himself, and would probably recant it if given the opportunity, but Puck couldn't stop the words that came out of his mouth next. "I love her, too."

"For now," Finn said easily. He wiped his sweaty palms over the thighs of his jeans and then stood up. "Break her heart and I'll break your face."

Finn moved down to help Rachel, and as the rest of the club filtered in, it just looked like another normal day. But for Puck, it kind of felt like everything had changed and shifted just a little bit. He wasn't sure he liked it.

When they had talked, even though it was mixed in with other things, she had said he had a reputation to protect so she understood if he didn't want to be part of an exclusive couple. He had wondered about her reputation—and she had been brutally honest about the differences between them. He was a football stud, he was a 'lascivious flirt', and a borderline criminal. She was, on the whole, a good girl but a total nerd who was mocked by the people more like him and borderline bullied. She honestly didn't expect him to come to her defense or be her 'knight in shining armor' because she didn't need one. She could get by just fine.

He let out a deep breath as he watched Finn talking to her. She was hesitating, not totally into the conversation, but she was smiling at least. He knew she could get by just fine but the question he had to answer was if he could. She had changed something about him. He didn't need to entertain or amuse himself with being nasty because he had other options now. Dumping someone in the dumpster or throwing a drink in their face just didn't hold the same appeal as earning a real smile from her (or hearing her say his name when he had worked so hard for her to moan it, but that had only happened once. Okay, three times over the course of the weekend and that was it, he would swear to it). She made him believe he could actually be a good person, and he already knew from experience that letting her down was the worst fucking feeling in the world.

Even as Rachel chatted casually, very superficially with Finn, she could feel Noah looking at her. Her eyes darted over there once or twice, just as she looked around the room and pretended to be doing a head count, and when she saw the intensity he was watching her with, it was like she could feel his hands on her. It made her squirm a little, truth be told. And whatever it was, all of it, she wanted to feel it again. She bit her lip and redirected her attention to Finn. He was talking animatedly about how Schue had asked him for ideas for their assignment and he thought he'd found a good one that she would really like.

Schue came in shortly and it was almost a relief for her. She and Finn moved to seats in the front row.

"So we have a while to get ready for sectionals yet," Schue started in his typical manner. "But I got to thinking, thanks to Finn mostly, about how we just spent so much time apart. What did you guys do this summer? With that in mind…" he turned to the dry erase board and printed a word in black ink that made Rachel's heart jump into her throat.

_Secrets._

Schue entered into a short monologue about how secrets were the key to most Broadway shows (he had flicked a glance at Rachel but had been surprised when she didn't start listing her favorites), movies, and there was a lot of musical material for it. He hoped for mashups they could try to mess around with for sectionals, but they could work in groups or alone. He just wanted the word 'secret' either in the title or featured prominently in the words.

Rachel looked over at Finn. He only gave her one, quick glance, but his jaw was set unusually hard. _He knew_. That's what he'd been talking about with Puck and now he was finding a way to get his revenge on her? No.

Not a single one of them were surprised when Schue launched into a version of the eighties jam Secret Lovers; all of them knew it was about the weirdo guidance counselor anyway.

Rachel folded her arms tight against her chest and fought the urge to fume out loud. She would find a way to get back at him. Her mind was like a musical catalogue. She could flip through it and find something quickly, right?

After Schue's song, everyone drifted into the usual sort of pairs. Rachel fought the urge to groan. She was not pairing with Finn for this assignment. She wasn't masochistic, and she knew it would hurt. Of course she had feelings for him; she had wanted all that so badly. The stuff with Noah had come up so suddenly she was having trouble figuring it all out. She was way too confused to mix that with any sort of singing and dancing together.

She looked over her shoulder, her eyes finally landing on Mercedes and Kurt. They were excitedly discussing possibilities for the assignment. She bit her lip. She might be able to bend them to her will. All she had to do was pick songs they loved or knew or could rock. It would have to be a mashup for sure.

The thought snapped into her head before she could even get across the room to them.

* * *

"I can't believe I let you talk me into this," Kurt said as Rachel dropped into the chair beside him.

"Are you nervous?" She asked. She looked over her shoulder at Puck; they had barely spoken in the last two days because he had told her she needed to figure out what she was after before they were doing _that_ again. She had managed to unmask him as a horrible liar by practicing her admittedly rough seduction skills, but she knew what she wanted now and she was going to make him go crazy in his seat. She could only hope he would accept the invitation, because the other part that was directed at Finn….well… even if Mercedes was singing most of it, it wasn't going to be well received. She could almost see in her mind the look that would be on his face as he realized she didn't necessarily _want_ love—at least not from him right now.

"Of course not," he scoffed. He looked at her out of the corner of her eye. "I would think you'd be more nervous."

Yeah, Kurt had played her like a cheap fiddle and got all the details in about ten seconds flat during their first rehearsal.

She blew out a breath. "No. It's way easier to express myself this way and I deeply appreciate you for letting me borrow your vocal talents to do it."

"Yes. It was a real sacrifice staring at Adam Levine on YouTube with you two last night."

Rachel laughed out loud, tossing her head back and resting a hand on Kurt's shoulder. He had been _right there_ with them drooling and he knew it. It was getting harder and harder to stay adversarial with him, especially when he had been so interested in what was going on with her—even if she had to admit that the more salacious aspects of the gossip made it right up Kurt's alley. Mercedes seemed to be right there with him in that respect, too. The trouble was, she knew as soon as she told them she was going to have to out her relationship with Noah to the whole group.

So much for the drama she'd been trying to avoid by pairing with Finn. This was just going to be even worse. She sighed to herself, barely hearing Schue's words as he welcomed them to class and barely committing herself to the warmups.

She looked over her shoulder at Noah and he winked. She gave him a coy little smile. She had at least told him that she was going to try to perform today. She bit her lip and turned around, unable to hide the smile.

"Wow, girl. You better keep your eyes off him while you're singing," Mercedes said and Rachel couldn't fight the squeaky little giggle that over took her.

Maybe in all of this, she was losing that girly, high feeling of starting a relationship. She really was a drag, wasn't she?

"Okay, so our Secrets assignment…anyone prepared?" Schue asked. He had been talking the whole time and Rachel hadn't heard a damn word he said. Kurt and Mercedes raised their hands, and each one of them grabbed one of Rachel's at the same time, so with four hands in the air, they secured their spot as first to go.

The song had a fairly long introduction, which worked out well as Rachel shrugged out of her long peacoat. She'd been trying to hide the short, kind of tight, red skirt she'd been wearing. Why was Tina Turner always wearing super short red skirts? She shook her head. It was because of the legs. She had strapped on chunky red shoes in an effort to show off her own legs, but didn't feel nearly as confident with it as the pop icon obviously was. And this choreography called for her to be _very_ confident.

She and Mercedes were stepping and moving to the first part of the song while Kurt tugged at his hat as Rachel started in on the words at long last.

_Watch the sunrise, say your goodbyes_

_Off you go_

_Some conversation, no contemplation_

_Hit the road_

The notes were a little bit low for her range, but she worked it out anyway. She walked around behind Kurt to give him the center for his next little part.

_Car overheats, jump out of my seat_

_On the side of the highway, baby_

_Our road is long, your hold is strong_

Now Mercedes took over, restraining the volume of her voice even as it maintained its usual intensity until she belted out the last two words.

_Please don't ever let go, oh no_

All three of them huddled together back to back as they uttered the main point of the song and could actually feel the grade they were earning, and they all instantly relaxed a little more, settling into the sexy groove of the music.

_ I know I don't know, but I want you so bad_

_Everyone has a secret, oh, can they keep it?_

_Say no they can't—oh, hey._

Rachel broke away, her feet still moving even as she looked at Noah while she sang the next part. The short skirt, the extra makeup, the strutting around—she could tell it was getting to him.

_It may seem to you that I'm acting confused when you're close to me_

_If I tend to look dazed, I've read it someplace I've got cause to be_

_There's a name for it, there's a phrase that fits_

_But whatever the reason, you do it for me_

He smiled and nodded, moving his head in time with the music in that totally sexy, over-confident way that was dripping with attitude and Mercedes and Rachel doubled up to sing their hearts out for the next main chorus.

_Oh, what's love got to do with it, got to do with it?_

_What's love, but a second hand emotion?_

_What's love got to do with it, got to do with it?_

_Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?_

Rachel took on the Tina Turner part (again—she was kind of surprised Mercedes had refused) as Mercedes and Kurt doubled up on a tight harmony for the interwoven themes from the first song. They had all been amazed how easily two totally different songs came together. It had been one of their easiest mashups ever, even with the three hottest heads in the room working on it.

_(Cool these engines, calm these jets, I ask you how hot can it get?)_

_I've been taking on a new direction but I have to say,_

_I've been thinking of my own protection_

_(I know I don't know you, but I want you)_

_(So bad)_

_It scares me to feel this way_

Puck's face fell as the last of her words rang out. She looked at him the whole time she was singing and, even though he couldn't stop watching, it was getting hard for him to keep up the expression that he was just enjoying the song and not actually listening to what she was saying. Her stare was so intent on him that he could feel the other club members watching him. Damn her. She was telling the entire glee club about him and telling him that she didn't know what she wanted in the same fucking breath. Not fair. She could've at least warned him. Then again, she probably knew there was no way he could pissed while she was prancing around in that skirt. He had been very detailed when he told her how much he liked her legs. And if he had to admit it, he could admit he knew what she was singing and he agreed.

_Everyone has a secret, can they keep it?_

_Say no they can't._

_Say no they can't._

All three of them had taken different vocal parts for the ending that tied back to the first song and they stood together, a powerful vocal triumvirate in the middle of the room, all breathing hard from their effort as they looked to their peers.

"So what's the big secret?" Santana said. She was probably mad they had covered Tina Turner and not invited her in on it since her voice was big enough to do it.

The ending pose Rachel, Mercedes and Kurt had struck came undone as they all faced forward.

"Rachel and Puck are," Finn said from the front row, his eyes landing on Rachel even as he spoke.

She had kind of known he knew but it didn't stop her eyes from widening a little bit when he said the words.

"Isn't that right, Rachel?" He finally asked when she didn't answer. She peeled her eyes away from him and looked over his shoulder and all the way across the room to where Puck was sitting quietly.

When her eyes landed on him, he stood up. He didn't look around the room, but kept his eyes locked on her.

"Yeah, that's about the size of it," he offered in a voice laced with a challenge.

Finn was starting to sit up in his chair and Schue felt the intense need to restore order before it resulted in punches being thrown. Judging by just how quiet Rachel was, she was deeply afraid of that kind of confrontation. If she, the least fearful person in the room in a lot of ways, was afraid then it was with cause.

Finn had teamed up with a new kid, Sam, to sing "Dirty Little Secret"; it was ironic because, as Sam was new and part of the football team only Finn had known him out of the group. Finn had recruited him single-handedly. Of course Brittany and Santana worked together and chose the Madonna song "Secret". Rachel wondered if it had something to do with Puck.

In short, by the time glee was over, she felt slightly battered and a little disoriented. It might've just been her self-centered nature coming out a little bit, but she felt like the whole assignment was directed at her and she hated that feeling.

She and Finn had some stuff to finish up after class and she was downright wary as she headed toward Schue's office. She was afraid of what he would say, and she had never really felt that particular way about him before; it just added to the unease.

Instead, it was Puck who grabbed her by the wrist and gently turned her to press against the wall beside the office.

"You did a great job," he breathed, his voice low and rumbling in his chest as he brought her arm and his hand above her head.

"Th-thanks," she stammered, looking over the intensity in his green-eyed stare. "I'm sorry I just kind of…put it all out there. I should've at least warned you first."

He nodded. "You're pretty fearless. I figured something like that would happen." He dropped his head so his breath danced over that sensitive spot on her neck where the mark he'd left on Friday was just starting to fade. "It's what I would've done too. Kinda badass."

Her eyes fluttered closed and she sighed. "Well, I have to be if I'm trying to keep up with your reputation."

Noah pressed against her more insistently. "There's only one way you need to worry about keeping up with me and _that's not it_."

She bit her lip to repress the moan. Even though all she could feel was the hard press of his hot body against her, she knew Finn and Schue were both around somewhere and she needed to cool down if for no other reason than privacy's sake.

Noah's thumb was tracing a circle on her wrist that made her heartrate speed up. She was so lame at all this flirting stuff and she knew it. He was getting to her with the simplest thing and she wasn't sure what to do that would get to him in the same way, she just knew that she desperately wanted to. So she leaned her head forward slightly and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth. As she pulled away and looked up at him, he was so close she was almost cross-eyed.

"Let's see how I do. See you after football practice?"

It took him a minute to answer and if she wasn't mistaken, that was his erection pressing against her. "Keep the skirt," he mumbled, giving her one more small kiss. "And the shoes."

"I have some dancing to do," she agreed; she was pretty sure he pressed against her more insistently as she bit her lip.

"Then you'll keep up just fine." He agreed. He pressed his hand against the wall to push away from her. "Laters."

Rachel sighed and sunk into the wall a little bit as she watched him go. She had propped her right foot against the wall while they were talking and she was glad now because she had to concentrate on her posture to actually keep standing. She let out a sigh that was altogether too embarrassing and, when Schue happened by with a raised eyebrow glance as if he were saying _Oh, really?_ she buried her face in her hands and giggled uncontrollably. At least it was out in the open. She could stop faking and restraining—because really, wasn't emoting way better for the acting career she had ahead than repression?


	5. Chapter 5: Get It Under Control

_**A/N:**__ Again, thank you for all the feedback on this. I'm so glad you're all enjoying it. Special thanks to Paceismyhero for the handholding as I continue to stretch these characters into the mold I want them to fit into. Just by way of a brief explanation: I've kind of altered the show's timeline to fit my own agenda. This is probably early October or so of their junior year (so early season 2). The whole situation with Finn/Kurt's families has been condensed for my own purposes to fit here instead of as it actually happened. Kurt is not yet at Dalton. This song was inspired by __**I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You) **__by __**John Mayer**__._

_**Disclaimer**__: I don't own Glee and I never will so stop asking._

* * *

**Get It Under Control**

Rachel's hand was shaking as she reached it out to place it gingerly on Finn's thigh. The party at Brittany's house was as raucous as any of them were, but neither glee club captain was in the mood for it. They showed up for appearance's sake but that was about it. It was kind of natural that, in their depressed states, they had drifted upstairs to the small family room with the super comfortable couch.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

He rested the side of his head against hers and sighed, closing his eyes. He shook his head and she could feel her hair moving underneath it. "Do you just ever wish you could rewind time and, like, close your mouth?"

She let out a harsh laugh. Of course she understood that feeling, even if she would never admit it. "No. I'm always perfectly prepared for the consequences of my verbal tirades."

He laughed and she had to admit it was good to hear. He'd looked a little storm cloudy since he arrived a bit ago, and though he grabbed a beer, he had pulled her aside and asked for insight into Kurt considering the tentative friendship that was forming between Kurt, Rachel, and Mercedes. They had been a near-constant threesome for close to a month since their first performance together in New Directions. It had been a really intense time for Kurt; as he was making those new friendships, he was going through a lot of stuff. Finn was finding it hard to be there for him. That meant Finn was going through a lot of stuff, and apparently, he and Burt had unloaded on each other (although she got the impression it was mostly Burt speaking, because Finn was _never_ the more loquacious party).

"C'mon, Finn. You're always the one who tells me how to fix it when I act out. What would you tell me to do?"

It was a long time before he spoke, and when he did his voice was full of shame and it was unsteady. "I wouldn't have to tell you what to do. You wouldn't have ever used that word."

She felt bad for him because she knew he was right. Even with some of her more massive screw-ups, she hadn't been so aggressively offensive. "No," she allowed. "But I think Burt blew it out of proportion because he didn't hear everything and I think Kurt is a little too willing to play the victim because of all this other stuff that's going on."

He sighed. "Either way, I screwed up. That's just obvious."

"Yeah," she said. "Would you rather see if you can sleep on the couch at my house? It's got to be better than a sleeping bag on the floor in your old room and it'll just be a matter of time until you've made it right."

He sat upright a little bit and rubbed at his eyes. He pulled the hand furthest from her up to his mouth to take a pull from the red plastic cup. "Probably not a good idea. You're taken," he muttered.

Now it was her turn to sigh. "Well…I'm not sure exactly how taken I am."

"What do you mean?" He asked. He immediately wanted to bash his head against the wall if it would help take the hopeful tone out of his voice. The goal here was _friendship_ after all. As their friendship had renewed and he remembered that she was a pretty damn good best friend, it was easier for him to shove his own feelings aside if it meant she would be happy with Puck. True to his word, however, he was on the lookout for any signs of heartache. He would at least make sure she was happy. He'd learned how to walk this line when she was with Jesse, after all, and he knew he could do it.

She didn't respond, just offered a shrug.

One of the hardest things for them to get back on track was discussing their relationships. While they had never exactly stopped being friends, it was like a wall was erected between them when she passed on what he offered and then didn't own up to dating Puck right away.

She had found out in passing, from Puck during an argument, that Finn had walked into the auditorium while they were _en flagrante_. It had only been a week since Puck had let that slip and she hadn't had the nerve to say anything to Finn about it. She didn't think she would ever have the palette for that particular conversation. It was one time (perhaps the only time) in her life that she was a strong advocate of avoidance.

The light flipped on, and before she could even process what was going on, Puck was flying across the room at Finn with Mike barely managing to hold him back.

"I will _kill_ you!" Puck yelled. Finn and Rachel both pressed back against the couch in surprise, their eyes still adjusting and their processing skills easily seconds behind their vision.

"Puckerman, stop it!" Mike said as Rachel caught sight of his arms that were wrapped around Puck's waist and visibly straining with tight muscles to hold him back. Matt was, thankfully, not too far behind them and got a good grip on one of Puck's arms. Sam stood in the doorway to the small living room with wide eyes but apparently willing to jump in if necessary. Once there was even a little space between Finn and Puck, Finn jumped up.

"What the hell are you doing, you idiot?" Finn yelled. "Nothing is going on!"

"Damn straight nothing is going on!" Puck yelled. Sam was in no-man's land as the two guys began calling each other out, his arms spread wide and his eyes wild because he was half afraid he was going to get crushed.

Rachel was a little uncertain what would happen if she tried to get in between the two of them; blows had been coming for a long time and that was no major secret in her world. But in this instance, she hadn't done anything wrong and damned if she was going to let any of it be related to _her._ Even if she knew, somewhere deep down, whenever it happened she would be the cause.

There were those who said she thrived on drama, but this was even just too much.

So she gathered up her courage and she stood, shooting a warning glance at Finn as she took two steps to stand directly in front of Puck.

"Don't you fucking look at _him_," Puck spit out.

She frowned and stared him down hard. "You might want to rephrase that, Noah."

"No, I don't think I want to at all."

He gave a violent shudder, and as Matt and Mike had been loosening their grips on him, it shook their hands off entirely. His eyes were locked on her and his jaw was steel. Rachel folded her arms and pressed them against her chest. Finn was herded out of the room under a tight bodyguard of the other three as they all left to give the couple—viciously staring each other down—some privacy.

Rachel fought the urge to ask what his problem was; he already smelled like Jack Daniels, and she thought it kind of a sad commentary on their relationship that she could differentiate that smell. He had been drinking. He liked to do it a fair amount, whenever he could get a hold of anything. Given the connections he had with the adult female community, he could get a hold of whatever he wanted generally whenever he wanted. It had been the subject of a couple arguments already.

She maintained her steely gaze and passive face as she looked at him. Her arms were still folded and she did what half the free world thought impossible for Rachel Berry—she kept her mouth shut. She watched as his fists finally relaxed, and his breathing very gradually evened out. His cheeks were flushed; he was still angry, but his eyes were losing their desolation.

Once she saw his shoulders slump, she exhaled but her tone was still tight and unforgiving.

"Explain yourself," she said simply.

He could barely hear her over the rush of blood in his ears. "Why were you touching him?"

"T-t-touching him?" She stammered in disbelief.

"Your hand was on his leg," he said. "You were touching him."

"He's my friend. He's upset."

"You can't possibly be that fucking stupid," he muttered, shaking his head. "You know, I knew you didn't have a lot of experience with this shit, but I never thought you were actually dumb."

Her eyes narrowed.

He had never actually felt the feeling that was still clawing at his chest before. He wasn't sure what it was. He only knew that it flashed instantly when he saw them huddled together in the dark on a couch, detached from the party. The next thing he knew, his hands were inches from Finn's throat and he wasn't totally against the idea of homicide. And while the rage was something he at least knew about, the other feeling…well, that was something else altogether.

Her eyes widened and she barely fought the urge to smile. "You're jealous," she concluded simply.

"No," he said immediately, like it was a knee-jerk response.

"Oh, you're jealous," she said with a nod. "I'm not stupid. I may be new to a lot of this, but I'm not stupid."

He frowned. "No. I'm mad." But he didn't sound so certain.

She couldn't fight the smile. "Did you see it and feel like maybe I was strangling you, just a little bit, and the only way to breathe was to get him away from me?"

He looked down. Yes, that was exactly how he fucking felt. Was she inside his head?

"Noah, you're a total hypocrite," she muttered. She placed her hand on his chest, leaning close and reaching into the front pocket of his jeans with her other hand.

"What?"

She shook her head as her hand landed on what she was looking for. She pulled his cell phone out. She knew she could only get away with it because his reflexes were dulled by alcohol. She and Finn hadn't been upstairs for very long, but she knew Puck had arrived after they'd already gone up. The kids were all using a downstairs entrance for the party, so she wasn't sure exactly when he'd arrived. He'd had a detention and makeup test this afternoon, following a longer-than-usual football practice no less, so they hadn't seen each other at all since school let out.

Anyway, she took the phone and broke the intense stare they had maintained this far to look down at it and maneuver her way to his text messaging inbox. She scrolled through them until she found the thread she was looking for, the one she'd known was there. In her efforts to figure it all out and not smother him (still trying to learn from her first real go-round with Finn), she knew he'd been exchanging sexy text messages with Santana but she hadn't called him on it.

_Saw you back in uniform, sexy. Reminds me of the locker room and you._

She swallowed hard. Seeing his replies on the screen made her feel a little less certain like this. It was certainly just a reminder that she was a little girl playing in a new sandbox. Of course, this sandbox was more like a martini bar (or something fancy and grown up that she wasn't quite sure of yet). As she scrolled through the two dozen or so messages that were tied together, she fought back the urge to cry. She was in so far over her head here, and she really, really hated that feeling.

_I'm bored. Say something dirty._

That one was from the party tonight. Santana was here somewhere. She had sent that while they were all under the same roof. Thank God there was no reply to that one.

She turned the phone around and held it out for him to take.

"I think she's waiting for you to answer with something naughty," she said. "You wouldn't want to keep her waiting, would you?"

"Rachel," he said softly.

"You were just accusing me of doing something inappropriate, right?" She asked, her voice still small. "Well, you've been doing inappropriate things, too. So let's figure out some boundaries."

He raised his eyebrows. So…Rachel knew about it. Rachel wasn't going to dump him for it? Wait…what?

"Are you going to make me talk about feelings or some girly shit like that? I'm not sure I've had enough to drink for that yet."

She sighed and her answer practically shocked him. She kept doing that; who knew Rachel was so full of surprises?

"Me, either, but let's give it the old college try," she said. It was more like a question than a statement and she reached for his free hand, the one dangling uselessly at his side instead of holding his phone and staring at it blankly.

"The what?" He asked as she began pulling him out the living room. It was more like dragging him. The last few minutes were starting to catch up with him as the alcohol (the two shots, that was) that he'd had on arrival was wearing off.

She settled on a bedroom at the end of the upstairs hall, the darkened level of the house a perfect place to hide and the unoccupied room even more of an insulated cave. There were the distant sounds of music and laughing floating up through the air vent, but otherwise they would've had no idea the party was going on downstairs.

Puck knew this room. He looked around uncomfortably. Rachel looked a little uncomfortable here, but she was never one to avoid changing that. She flipped on the light (it had a dimmer switch because this was Brittany's older brother's room and he was a bit of a manwhore), frowning as she realized what she was doing. Then she just settled for leaving it at less than full brightness before she moved to stand in front of him. He'd plopped right down on the bed, the only flat surface in the room other than the tall bureau of drawers. Jason had taken his desk with him to college and the room was still furnished but everything was emptier than he remembered.

She twisted her hands around as she looked at him seriously. He leaned back on his palms and waited. He could read that look on her face—she was preparing her monologue. No, really. She had told him before that's how she thought of it.

"Noah," she started, her voice remarkably steady considering how rattled she looked. "I know you suck at this part of a relationship." He scowled but stayed silent. "So I'm going to lead by example and remind you of the first time we….did it."

He smirked. He had stumbled upon a rare thing—a girl who talked non-stop, used words bigger than a fucking dictionary, but still stuttered if she mentioned sex.

She took a deep breath and plunged ahead. "I told you I just jumped into it and the truth was that I was, and I have continued to be, very confused. The way I feel about you is so different from what I've ever expected. But I've come to realize that I love you." His eyes widened and his stomach dropped out a little bit. She noticed his reticence but she continued. "I don't want to be with anyone but you." She wanted to choke the tears out of her voice and be composed, but she couldn't do it. "And I think I can trust you, but you have to know that's what I'm expecting first. And I have to know that you're on the same page and willing to trust me the same way, Noah. Otherwise…otherwise I'm afraid we're fooling ourselves and this just isn't going to work."

This is normally where he would cut her off and tell her to have a nice life. Instead, he just watched her, his stare unreadable and uncertain.

"I kind of need an answer," she demanded eventually, tears still standing in her eyes.

She trusted him… she loved him. And as much as he was usually over that garbage pretty quick, she had thrown him into a whole new world. He felt guilty, almost dirty, when he got the messages from Santana. He had immediately fast-forwarded to imagine this moment and, truthfully? He was pretty sure he had failed the test he'd taken because he was so distracted and worried. That worry, that feeling, was the whole reason he had started drinking fast and hard as soon as he got here. And then he hadn't been able to find Rachel, and Santana had pressed herself against him to offer the suggestion that Rachel and Finn had gone upstairs. And then everything just kind of exploded on him.

"I don't trust _myself_," he finally said, his voice low. Her stare continued, the same intensity she always had holding firm. "All right?"

When it was clear he wasn't going to say anything else, she frowned and pressed her hand to her hip, jutting her leg out at an angle. "What do you mean?"

"You can't love me," he spit out. "You love the idea of me. What would it do for your rep to tame the bad boy? It would make you the hottest girl in school."

Her careful frown had crumbled into anger. "Get over yourself," she spat out.

"Why would you choose me over Finn? It doesn't make any sense. He's the nice guy. I'm just…I get bored. I move on quick."

She took a deep, steadying breath before she smoothed her hands over her skirt and sat down right next to him. She took his hand and looked over him.

"Are you bored?"

He hadn't really moved his arm, had just kind of allowed it to go the direction she pulled, so his forearm was exposed to her. She held his hand in one of hers, and the fingers of her other hand danced over the underside of his arm.

"N-no," he stammered. He couldn't stop looking at her. Her eyes were changing constantly and it was almost fascinating as he realized he understood every single shift, every single thing she wasn't saying.

Her breathing was slow and even. "This isn't about my reputation…or _yours_. This is about my gut instinct telling me you are nothing like your father through sheer force of your iron will." His arm tensed and he tried to pull away. She met his icy grip with a tight grip of her own and kept his hand right where it was.

Another surprise? She was freakishly strong.

"I didn't say anything about my father," he said, his voice edgy and his lips barely moving.

"You didn't have to," she whispered. She closed her eyes. "I've watched you try to be honorable, albeit in your own screwed up way. And I've watched you push away everyone who is good to you in your life. I'm not going to let you do it to me, Noah. Especially not over some silly misunderstandings or insecurities."

He swallowed hard. He didn't know what to say. "So what do we do?"

She opened her eyes and looked at him steadily. "Well, you have to be honest with me. Tell me exactly what you want. I will do my very best to make sure you get it."

He was trapped by her gaze but it didn't feel like it was choking him or strangling him. It was like all the words he needed were hidden there and she would give them freely if he just looked hard enough. "You," he finally managed.

"What about me?" She finally asked.

He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against hers. He reached up the hand she wasn't holding to tangle it in her long hair. "You're everything, babe."

"So you don't need to send Santana dirty messages," she muttered, her voice low.

"I don't want to," he admitted. "But I'm kind of afraid she's going to shank you if I stop."

Rachel chuckled. "Well…I'm not afraid of her. She's been pulling stuff like that since grade school."

"I don't want you to get hurt."

"Do you want to know a secret?" She whispered, still pressed close to him and still dragging her fingers along his arm. It was so hard for him to focus when she was doing that. Plus, his fingers were starting to ache for the touch of her warm skin.

"Hmm?" He asked, the word barely more than a rumble from his chest.

"I trust you to protect me. It's one of my favorite things about you. You are fierce and you defend the things that are precious to you." She couldn't take it anymore, even the distance of centimeters just too far. She gave him a soft kiss. "You will stand up for me. You will fight for me. Finn…Jesse…they never did that. It's one of the many things that makes you an individual."

He swallowed hard, trying to back down all of the things that were threatening to overwhelm him and strip away any of the dignity he was so anxious to hold onto. "You don't need me to, though."

Her free hand drifted up to his chest and rested right above his heart. She kissed him again, softly. Her voice was so low, so soft, he could barely hear her. "But I want you…"

She left a word he was waiting for off the end of that sentence and before he knew what he was doing, he was pushing her back on the double bed. Once she laid down, still kissing him, she released her grip on his hand and brought both her hands up to the back of his neck. He wrapped an arm around her waist and dragged her with him until her head was resting on the pillow at the top of the bed. He kept his kisses soft and tender, trying to use the best way he could to tell her all the stuff he was really no good at saying. Finally, he brought one knee up and nestled it between her legs so he could kneel above her on it. Once he did, she reached for the bottom of his shirt.

"This is probably totally inappropriate," she said when she had to break away from his kiss to pull his shirt over his head. As she smoothed her bare hands over his chest, he lowered his mouth to her ear.

"I'm pretty sure hooking up at a party is hot," he said. He let his tongue dart out to trace the inside curve of her ear. "And it's never bad when it's me. But only me from now on…got it?"

She turned her head, keeping her ear out of his reach and pressing her cheek against his. "Got it. A long time ago." As the words left her lips, he had to admit that he was pretty sure it had been the case, but…well, it was never bad for her to say it again.

Her leg nudged his other one out of the way so he was kneeling in between her legs—without a fucking doubt his new favorite place in the world. Well, new since the first time she'd let him. Before he could drop down to press against her, her hand was at the waistband of his pants and his hand was sneaking underneath her shirt to rub an index finger over the smooth satin of her bra. He straightened his legs out to balance on the toes of his boots so she could push his pants down to his ankles. While he was pressed into the extended push up, both hands sinking into the mattress and plaid comforter and his abs totally engaged to hold him up, she took her time sliding back up his body—tongue first. He closed his eyes in concentration so he didn't fall and kill her, but she lingered around his thighs, then drew a careful half-circle around everything he wanted her to take into her hot mouth, finally dipping her tongue in his belly button as he released a guttural groan.

"Fucking _tease_," he muttered. As her tongue was still working up his body, he could feel her lips curve into a smile. She flicked at his nipple ring when he said that.

"I don't like your tone," she said, the iciness in her voice totally forced. His abs clenched tight and his hips thrust against his own will. Once she was settled beneath him again, he collapsed on top of her as carefully as possible. Her hands slid up his bare back, and once they hooked around, he saw something out of the corner of his eye as it slipped closed when he bent to kiss her again.

He opened his eyes and rolled them to the side, turning his head slightly and hearing her giggle right in the ear he'd pressed to her mouth. She was holding the condom that had been in his back pocket pinched between her middle and index fingers.

"When did you turn into a thief?" He demanded. She gave a small laugh and nipped at his ear, her teeth scraping over it before her lips found the spot immediately behind. He had never been nibbled by another woman quite the same way, and each new press of her teeth sent a jolt of electricity straight through him.

"When did you start complaining so much?" She demanded.

He took his opportunity to raise up and unbutton the red, white, and pink sweater she was wearing. "When did you start wearing so many clothes?" He asked. He pulled back a little more and raised his eyebrows as her hands pushed his out of the way and she began unbuttoning the sweater at twice the speed he'd been doing it.

"Excuse me, Princess? I thought I was in charge here."

"Get used to those days being over," she said matter-of-factly as she pulled her arms out of the sweater, leaving her in a pale pink lace bra. The thin fabric did nothing to hide the deep pink-brown color of her nipples, teased to tight little peaks under his wandering fingers.

He lowered his head to her neck and she pressed against him more insistently as she dropped her head back into the pillow to give him easier access. He felt totally bad that she almost always had hickeys on her neck; then again he totally didn't feel bad.

His hands wandered freely over her skirt, knowing there was no way she was going to get totally naked on the party at some random bed. His hands hit the white tights she was wearing with her dress and he withdrew his lips from her skin with a groan.

"What in the hell am I supposed to do with these?" He asked, pinching at the thin material. He rose up enough that he could look down between them, and it was just in time to watch her smooth her hand over the curve of his ass, clamp it over his fingers and then slide his hand up her leg quickly until he felt….wait, what? He wiggled his hand enough to flip her red, pleated skirt up just enough to see….garters?

Oh, fuck. She was trying to kill him. If she was wearing shit like that to _school_ he was a dead man. He pressed his erection into her thigh a little harder, unable to take another second without some sort of friction because his balls felt so tight. She wasn't kidding—he would never have control again. In this moment, when it was just him and her and their breathing, he was okay with that if this was the kind of shit she would do with the upper hand.

He fingered the garter lightly one more time, releasing it with an audible snap against her thigh. She gave a little squeak and he smiled at her, trying to appear innocent even if she knew better. He moved his hand over, slipping one finger into the side of her panties, unsurprised to feel the same lacy texture that he'd felt on her bra. She was a totally OCD freak about her underwear matching, so he was sure they did. She was moving underneath him, this little wiggle that, again he thought would kill him if she didn't stop.

She couldn't handle how slow or gentle he was being anymore, and she thrust up, pressing his crooked finger into her slick folds. His smile was as slow and sexy as the rest of him as he straightened his finger out and ran it down the length of her slit, finally pushing the one finger inside her as far as it would go. She thrust against him again, forcing a second finger inside her even as he'd been holding it back for a second. Her eyes squeezed shut and she let out a loud gasp. He began moving his fingers inside her, lost again in depth of her heat and how wet she was. He could lose himself there forever. All his uncertainty, all his buried doubt, disappeared when she was underneath him or letting him inside her.

Her breathing deepened into a raspy series of pants.

"Please…more…. God, Noah…. Don't stop. Don't stop. Harder…" she was thrashing her head back and forth and he dropped his free hand to her stomach, pressing just below her belly button to hold her still. He circled his thumb around her clit one last time and she came, her sweet voice belting out a list of swear words that made him raise his eyebrows in surprise.

"I want to taste you," he huffed out. "Please?"

There was no denying the short skirts she wore provided easy access, but he hardly ever got her all the way naked. They were always rushed and rarely truly alone. "Not here," she said, her chest still heaving as he backed up to get the condom wrapper from where she'd dropped it on the blanket and opened it. She took two swallows of air, punctuated by grunts. "Tomorrow." She squeezed her eyes shut. "My room."

He slipped the condom over himself. While it was true there were plenty of other things he wanted to do, he wasn't going to complain or wait any longer for the main event, either. He edged her underwear out of the way as much as possible before he rubbed his thick head everywhere his fingers had just been. He was still kneeling, intending to lean forward and kiss the hell out of her already-swollen lips, but as he gave the thrust that pushed him inside her, she lifted her leg up to prop her ankle on his shoulder.

"Noah," she said, her eyes still closed and her voice no more than a breathy gasp. She motioned her hands forward until, unsure what she was after, he leaned forward enough she could slip her hands over his shoulders to the back of his neck, her leg pressing down in between them as he went so that she was basically doing the splits while he was on top of her. Her foot was in the air but not that far off the bed.

"_Damn, Berry_." He gasped out. He let his hand trace up the underside of her thigh, finally wrapping his arm around her leg and hugging it close to his bare chest, his fingers rubbing against her smooth shin. She was _doing the splits while they had sex_. He couldn't even choke out words to mutter how impossibly hot that was. He leaned forward just a little more, feeling the joint in her hip give way to easily allow it. With the slight change of angle, he was brushing against her clit with every stroke and it was about three seconds before she pulled her head up off the pillow, using every muscle in her tight little body to place a wet, open mouthed kiss right on his mouth. As her tongue slipped inside his mouth with an insistent thrust, she let out a whimper and bit down a little bit, just enough to scrape his lip and maybe draw blood. He didn't care because then she came so hard it drained his own orgasm from him almost immediately. He leaned his head against her ankle, turning his head to place a gentle kiss there before he pulled back. He frowned a little bit, wiping a trace of blood from the spot he kissed before he held a hand out to her to pull her up to sitting as well. They sat there in the middle of the bed, looking at each other, still breathing heavy. She eventually broke the moment by turning to reach for her shirt. He took that as a cue they had all the girly shit and the horniness under control for a minute, or at least as much as was going to happen right now.

* * *

They rejoined the party a short time later, after a quick trip to the bathroom to resituate clothes and smooth hair (for her). He was a pro at this kind of fixing up and got all her lip gloss off the side of his neck. She had left a faint mark under his ear, but his lip was starting to swell up where she had bitten down as she came. He pressed his fingers to the tender flesh hesitantly, offering a small hiss as he did so; however, the hesitant motion recalled the moment it happened and it wasn't like he could be anything other than totally turned on and ready to do it all again. She watched him out of the corner of her eye with a smile.

"Sorry," she said. Then she looked in the mirror again, her cool fingers pressing into the red mark on her neck that was starting to turn purple. "You know, I'm running out of ways to hide these from my dads."

He offered an arrogant smile. "Then stop liking it when I suck on you so much. I'm just here for your pleasure."

Someone knocked on the bathroom door and they exited quickly, deciding without talking about it to rejoin the party downstairs. He led, walking with his chest out and a bit of an arrogant strut that made her want to trip him, but she let him pull her anyway.

A quick sweep of the room revealed that Finn's coping mechanism for both his remorse and the unprovoked attack was copious drinking. His cheeks were flushed and he held up a red cup to them.

"Hey, guys! There you are!" He said, his grin quick and dopey.

"God," Quinn groaned, her eyes trained on Rachel's neck. "It's like he peed all over you." Rachel just looked down and didn't say anything, as Artie noticed Puck's lip at the same time.

"Looks like she punched you at least once," he said. Puck shook his head and turned to look at her with an affectionate smirk.

"Yeah, she always gets her shots in," he admitted. Mike approached him with another red plastic cup.

"You stayin' dude?"

No one missed the casual glance he shot to Rachel. She leaned forward and spoke just quiet enough for him to hear.

"Let me see your keys for a minute," she requested. He pulled them out of his pocket and watched, unsurprised as she removed his car key and then handed them back. "I'm keeping this one until tomorrow." She leaned over so she could see Sam around Puck where he stood between her and the room at large, already trying to kiss her again. She went up on her tiptoes.

"Sam, you driving?"

"Yes, ma'am." He agreed. In his brief time in glee, Sam had already started showing an interest in Quinn and abstinence from a lot of things was part of that deal. He was usually the chauffer for his less inhibited friends and he seemed to take it in stride. "I'll get him home."

She nodded and mouthed her thanks at him. "Have fun," she said softly, reaching up to press a goodbye kiss to his lips. She let her teeth tug on the spot she'd bitten earlier and he grunted. "I'll see you tomorrow." He just closed his eyes and nodded before she turned to go upstairs so she could be on time for her midnight curfew.

He took a long pull from his drink as she left, watching her ass as she went (what? He was officially her boyfriend now so that shit was legal). A few minutes later, his phone buzzed in his pocket.

_I miss your tongue already._

His eyes widened as he looked at it. He swallowed hard when it was followed by a picture that showed flesh with a hint of pale pink fabric. It looked like he was just changing sexting partners. And it looked like he might spend the rest of the night uncomfortably hard because he was _definitely not _in control here.

"Dude, what the hell?" Mike said, watching him closely. "I wanna see that!"

And thus began the fight for an entirely different kind of control.


	6. Chapter 6: Get It Back

_**A/N**__: So this part kind of took a turn—like they all do. This is not turning into a Finn/Rachel fic. And I have ideas for at least two more parts after this so… please enjoy, please respond, and please ignore the fact that I'm not giving song credits because I'm freaking lazy. But all these songs really are part of the Karaoke Revolution empire. Also, the dates for Hanukkah here are a bit off (unless Rachel is turning 18 in 2014) but I've taken so many liberties with canon/fact at this point I don't care anymore. _

_Anyway, thanks for reading and replying. I'm still trying to get back to everyone for individual replies, but I kind of hope I get enough replies I can't keep up. You know what I'm saying! Feed my ego, please? Haha._

_**Disclaimer: Still don't own Glee.**_

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**Get It Back**

Rachel had reached out with one hand to grab her drink from the table, never breaking her legs-crossed posture. Finn looked over at her amusedly but just for a second before he turned back to the game they were playing.

"What, is this turning into a drinking game?"

She released her lip hold on the pink straw and looked over at him. "Not necessarily. Noah was supposed to arrive. He had something to finish up," she said. She leaned forward to put her drink on the table and then started into the violent war game again. She stuck her tongue out as she expertly tilted the controller and slammed her thumbs down on a couple of buttons. Finn's side of the screen went red.

"You've got to be kidding me," he said flatly. He turned to the people behind them, which was most of the glee club. It was Rachel's birthday—her eighteenth no less—and her dads were out of town during Hanukkah so Puck had decided on a party. And he had yet to show up.

So Finn turned around to the room behind him. "All right, who's up?"

"Daaaamn, Rachel!" Artie offered. "Who knew two years ago when we started this that you would turn into the reigning Halo champion?" He had wheeled over and held his fist out to her. "Props."

She grinned and bumped her fist against his as she felt a buzzing in her pocket. "Oh!" She squeaked in surprised, reaching in as Finn sat down next to her on the couch.

"How did I get four slots of ass-kicking in a row?" he grumbled. "Where is Puck?"

Rachel giggled a little bit as she looked at her phone. "He got held up doing something for his mom." She tossed the jewel crusted phone into his lap and picked her controller back up to resume the game. "Text him something dirty from me."

"'scuse me?" Finn said as he watched her. He had managed to navigate watching the girl he still loved (still? _Shut up_. Who said that?) carry on a serious relationship with someone who had once been his best friend. But despite the year and a half of watching them fight, flirt, pout and even fool around (always on accident and kind of damaging) he had never felt so deep in the friend zone as he did the moment she asked him to _sext her boyfriend back_.

"You're probably better at it than I am," she said with an honest shrug.

Santana just so happened to overhear the exchange and so of course she called loud attention to it. She had finally backed off after an ugly confrontation with Rachel just before regionals—like out in the hallway right before they went on stage—last year. "Wait, hold up midget. Did you just tell Finn he's better at sexting than you?"

Rachel, still in her drunken oblivious fog, shrugged. "Probably."

Santana shook her head with a smirk and held her hand out. "Give it."

"But…"

"No, give it. This is different than when I said I would step off. This is me helping you," she offered with a defiant shake of the head.

"Umm… thank you?" Rachel said. Finn handed the phone over to Santana against his better judgment. Her fingers flew over the screen and then she tossed it right back into his lap. It landed right on target and he groaned unappreciatively.

Then Santana leaned down next to Rachel to speak in a low voice in her ear. "If you have any hope of living up to what I just promised for you, slow down on the hooch."

Rachel turned her head and gave a wide smile. The opening credits of the next round on Halo started up thanks to Finn's attention, and as she turned her head and settled back in to kick his ass again, she shrugged. "Noted. Thank you." She struggled to imagine what Santana could've possibly written, and her divided focus paid off in Finn's first win of the video gaming night.

"Ha!" He said, leaning toward her in his triumph as she stuck out her lower lip. "Take that!"

Everyone else was engaged in a variety of activity behind them (mostly uniting to choose a karaoke game that would replace the horribly one-sided Halo game going on), so Rachel scooted a little closer to Finn, her arm bumping against him even as she shivered a little.

"What did Santana send?" She asked.

"Rach," he said shortly, rolling his head over to see her face. "One of the big secrets to our friendship is that I don't know all the dirty stuff you and Puck like."

"Who says it's dirty?" She protested lightly.

He rolled his eyes. "Let me break this down for you. You and Puck have been getting down together for a year and a half. You're the first girl he hasn't showed a single sign of boredom around which makes me think he's not bored. Do you see where I'm going with this?" He muttered as he picked her phone up from where it had fallen in his lap. He knew the look she was giving him and he knew he would look whether he really wanted to or not—plus she was probably already too drunk to read it.

He turned her phone sideways and hit the button to turn it on. His phone was very similar so it wasn't hard for him to get to her sent text messages. He tapped his finger on the screen to pull it up, big enough they could both see it.

_My tongue fucks your ear and my voice whispers how bad I want you...if you were here my hands would be all over you until the whisper was a scream. Where are you?_

"Oh my God!" They said at the same time, Finn flinging her phone out of his grasp in something almost like horror. Santana laughed from behind them.

"All right," Mercedes announced. "We have a winner!" She held up a game case triumphantly from the cabinet in the opposite corner of the room. She moved quickly to the actual game console near the television, knowing she only had a short window to pry Rachel away from Halo. Once the extremely competitive brunette found something she was good at, she didn't want to do much else. They all knew karaoke was one of the few ways to distract her.

As Mercedes expertly queued up the song Brittany had requested, Beyonce's "Crazy in Love", Rachel's phone emitted a wail that was not quite normal for the ringtone.

She looked over at Finn. "I think you broke my phone."

"Yeah, well, I think your phone broke my eyes so we'll call it even," he grumbled, his eyes leaving her to watch with amusement as Brittany sat in Artie's lap, by now an expert at grinding against him in his wheelchair, as all the girls were bouncing around, singing rhythmic "oh"s and "I wanna's" in time with the music.

Rachel couldn't help it. Her shoulders starting moving. She looked at Finn with a smile. He'd been drinking, not quite as much as she was, but she knew he wasn't totally sober. So why he was still so…unfun…was beyond her. She climbed into his lap and grabbed his shoulders, moving them back and forth as she sang and smiled.

_I look and stare so deep into your eyes, I touch on you more every time_…

He rolled his eyes, his posture loosening up and he finally smiled as she continued to look at him like she just wanted him to have fun. Truthfully, the way the whole group had paired off was even more awkward when they started picking songs like this in social settings. And maybe the text had gotten to him a little more than he wanted to admit. It wasn't necessarily totally about Rachel, but when he was buzzed and she was being cute, it was hard not to regret everything that had happened.

Eventually, she coaxed him out of his seat so he would join the bouncing around the room, even squinting at the screen to see some of the rapper's words to the song and muttering them in time with Artie. By the end of the song, Rachel was bouncing with Quinn (who knew _either_ of them could actually _bounce?_), Brittany wasn't wearing her shirt as she and Artie kissed furiously with broken up "Good job" and "You're so hot" compliments freely flowing. Blaine and Kurt had arrived while everyone was bouncing around the room and had tossed off coats to join. Nearly immediately, Santana and Mike moved over the Rachel's dads' bar in the corner to get everyone drinks.

Kurt moved to the game, already knowing his favorite song to watch everyone sing when they were trashed. "Careless Whisper" was kind of like the perfect song for them to cheese it up to, and it would allow Blaine (who was _not_ the designated driver and responsible party tonight) to catch up to the rest of the group in terms of intoxication. Once the saxophone started, he was both amused and unsurprised when Rachel sought him out and began an exaggerated slow dance. She was smiling brightly as she kissed his cheek.

"Hi," she said warmly. "Thanks for coming!"

"Thanks for making it to eighteen in one piece," he said with a smile. She was already pressed tightly against him and rocking back and forth, her rhythm still matching up to the slow pop song. His eyes scanned the room. "Where on earth is your boyfriend? He's the one you should be hanging from like a hood ornament."

She laughed and then looked into her nearly empty cup with a frown, taking a small pull from the cup before she looked back up to Kurt, his smooth skin and blue eyes so close his features were blurring together. "Hanukkah stuff with his mom. It's the third night and she insisted he do the family thing."

Kurt raised an eyebrow. "Why are your dads gone for your birthday?"

She shrugged. "It was the first year in five that my dad could go be with his parents and siblings. He said he wanted to be with people who weren't so ambivalent about the holiday and there was just no way for me to miss school and join them this time." Although she proclaimed her Jewish-ness openly, she wasn't particularly devout and it was a frequent source of mild contention amongst her and her one Jewish dad, but it also wasn't that big of a deal. Hanukkah and Rosh Hashanah were really the only times he would make even passive comments about it.

Kurt just rested his cheek on top of her head and began singing in time with the song.

_To the heart and mind, ignorance is kind. There's no comfort in the truth—pain is all you'll find._

He knew it bothered her a little, but she was too happy of a drunk to admit it. And it was her birthday so there was really no sense in pressing the issue.

Blaine came over with a water for Kurt and his own drink and they began a sort of three-way dance. Blaine and Rachel weren't particularly close friends, but they did seem to enjoy each other's company and he pressed a kiss to her flushed cheek to wish her a happy 18th.

As the words faded out, Quinn muttered something about a buzz-kill and picked up one of the X-box controllers to queue up another song. They all recognized "What I Like About You" with its bouncy, raucous beginning and started moving around again, Rachel breaking away from the boys so she could dance on her own, the other girls bouncing up and down and gravitating to her spot up in front of the room near the television even though they didn't need to see the display to know the words. This was just another gathering for them and they had done exactly this many times before.

Rachel was surprisingly good with fast words, even as she drank more so she kind of ended up taking lead on the song even though the tune wasn't extremely melodic. Mike was attempting (for at least the hundredth time in his life) to teach Finn a little bit about break-dancing, and the whole group was joining in for "Hey's" and "Aahs" as Rachel hopped nimbly between them all.

No one registered the footsteps on the stairs until Puck was standing in the arched entryway to the downstairs recreational area, finally catching Rachel bouncing around, the pink straw flopping in her cup as her mouth moved. He folded his arms against his chest and smirked right about the time she saw him and her whole face lit up. She moved over to him in time with the song, tugging on the tie his mom made him wear for Hanukkah. When he got her text, there was no fucking way he was going to waste his time changing clothes before he came over. Now he kind of wished he hadn't given her a leash as she pulled him into the room by it, rocking her shoulders back and forth as she belted out the words to the song. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright, and he knew she was already quite likely to regret this in the morning.

_What I like about you, you keep me warm at night… never wanna let you go, no you make me feel alright. Keep on whispering in my ear, you tell me all the things that I wanna hear 'cause it's true…that's what I like about you!_

She let her commanding of the lyrics drop off as she pressed herself against him. He settled his hands on her waist as she threw her arms around his neck.

"Hi," she said warmly, her breath tickling his ear.

"Hi, yourself," he said simply, letting his hands wander down over the plaid woolen skirt she wore to goose her firmly. "Not that it's a party without the Puckasaurus, but sorry I'm late."

"You should be. You need to make it up to me. _Now_."

When he had first seen the text message, he was pretty sure it was Santana that had sent it. Rachel tended to send dirty song lyrics or something which was sometimes pretty fucking entertaining in its own right, but the earlier message had been way more straight-up. Now he wasn't so sure.

He looked around the room, his eyes giving a careful sweep as Mercedes and Kurt were scrolling through the menu to pick the next song and everyone else was deep in conversation. Rachel was really the only one who had seen him come in. They might get away with it.

Rachel leaned forward even more and cupped his crotch through the thin fabric of the stupid black dress pants he was wearing as she looked over her shoulder. Brittany had stepped over to where Mercedes and Kurt were and everyone knew her selection would be the lone Britney Spears song on this particular game.

"Fuck, woman," Puck groaned even as she pressed the heel of her hand against his growing erection. She used the leverage she had there to push him backwards and out the room before anyone noticed. He knew this hallway, the small guest bathroom off to one side and then the bedroom at the end both familiar territory to him. He had slept there more than once. He was a little thrown off-balance when she led him into the bathroom rather than the bedroom.

"I missed you, Noah," she said, leveling a devastatingly sexy brown-eyed gaze at him. "There's only one thing I want for my birthday."

He raised his eyebrows and looked behind him at the tiled counter. "To make me scream like a girl? Because that tile is fucking _cold_ and you know it's your turn to be on top."

She didn't smile, didn't move her eyes at all as she unbuckled his belt and expertly dropped his pants. "Oh, I'll make you scream," she said, rising up to press a kiss to his lips. He was too stunned to even close his eyes as he heard, more than felt, his pants hit the ground around his ankles. "Brittany turned the music up loud enough they won't even hear you. And all I want for my birthday is to _hear _you."

His eyes rolled closed as she sank down to her knees. Fuck—it was _her_ birthday. He had a whole shitload of supplies upstairs to make her bedroom all romantic (oh yeah, he had totally sought out Quinn and Sam's help with that shit because he kind of drew the line at saying how felt, let alone spelling it out with candlelight) and she just wanted to give him head in the bathroom? On one hand, he felt like the night had gone terribly wrong. On the other hand, he wasn't going to complain.

As her tongue swept over his belly button, he dropped his head back. For all of her hesitation and needing constant reassurance that she was doing it right in the beginning, she had been good at this from the word go. When she told him she liked doing it, who was he to stop her? Seriously. She was the best girlfriend ever in that regard. He'd even managed to avoid bragging about her deep throat after she promised he would stop benefitting when others found out.

And as she slid her mouth all the way down his length, allowing her teeth to ever so lightly scrape against the engorged flesh, finally stopping only when the hot, silky back of her throat was tapping at the tip of his penis and making it feel like it might explode way before he wanted her to stop what she was doing. At the same time, it felt so good, her hand coming up to massage his balls with a thumb between them adding a whole other element of pressure to everything. He couldn't help it, his abdominal muscles tensed up as she settled into a regular rhythm, his fingers dipping down into her soft hair as his hips thrust against her mouth, her lips hitting his skin with just the right amount of pressure. Her hands dropped to grab the back of his knees and she hummed lightly with the pulsing rhythm of the song, "Toxic", that Brittany had selected in the other room. They could hear everyone singing along, undoubtedly being led in a complex choreography that Brittany could even rock when she was drunk.

He was kind of being rocked himself and he couldn't really fucking focus on all the outside noise. He was grateful for it as the humming she was doing, her mouth now down on the tight skin just below his erection and her fingers wandering at the area just behind his balls.

"Fuck, Rachel. I love your tongue," he groaned. The music was loud and there was no way he could restrain himself when her tongue was dancing around him like a stripper on a pole.

She pulled away enough to just drop a soft kiss on his length. "And I love you," she said simply before she slid her mouth all the way over him again. He looked down, never more turned on in his life than when he could see her lips pressed to his skin and knowing she was one of only a couple of girls who had ever taken him all the way in like this. And somehow, she'd managed to take him in even further. He was pretty sure she had ruined head for him unless she was the one performing it.

He couldn't control the insistent thrust of his hips. His fingers sank into her hair again and tugged tight.

"Mmm… harder…" she said around him; like hell if he wasn't going to answer her demand. His next thrust was harder, less careful and she just grabbed the back of his knee with the her free hand even harder, letting her fingers press into the flesh. The coolness of her hand, how wet her mouth was, it all piled on him quickly and gathered in his balls.

"I'm gonna…I'm gonna…" he started, panting and unable to get the whole sentence out.

"Fuck, Rachel. _Oh, fuck y_our mouth…" he yelled out, dropping his head back as he came violently into her waiting mouth. She slowed down her movements gradually, finally pulling his pants from the ground as she stood up. She placed a long, thorough kiss to his lips.

His hands roamed her body hungrily. Her shirt was still tucked into her skirt tightly and he tugged at it, but she reached down while they were kissing and stilled his hands.

"No way, sweet cheeks. Your turn," he said, easily and quickly flipping her around before she had his belt done all the way up. He had every intention of hoisting her on the counter and letting his tongue have its way with her (what kind of fantastic payback was _that_? The best kind,) but she shook her head.

"Later," she promised. She kissed him again. Her eyes were only half-open and she was slumping a little bit against him. To be honest, he might not have even noticed a couple of years ago but now he knew her well enough to know that it meant two things. First, she was reaching that point of drunk where he needed to find a way to persuade her to either slow down or stop drinking or the night was going seriously south. Second, she would be stuck like glue to him for the rest of the night. Not that he minded, it just usually meant he had a barely-controlled hard-on until everyone left gatherings like this. He would have to plant himself on the couch and try to avoid a situation where he might need to walk.

Noah took a rare serious moment and kissed her passionately, pressing his tongue into her mouth and raising his hands up to cup her jaw in his hand as he poured everything into the kiss—all his wishes for a truly happy birthday for the crazy and amazing girl who was quite likely the love of his life. When he pulled away, she nestled easily into his hand. "Later I'm gonna love you 'til you pass out," he promised.

The door crashed open and interrupted their moment. It was Mike, his eyes averted and hand reaching out with Rachel's phone. "We're all glad Rachel has a nice mouth and all, but her dads are calling her."

Puck chuckled and reached out to take the phone from her hand as Rachel blushed a little and pressed her face into his chest. It didn't occur to him to be embarrassed that they heard him.

"Thanks, man," he said simply. He dropped a kiss to Rachel's forehead.

"Stay here where it's quiet, call your dad back, and I'll be waiting." He said, setting the phone on the counter. "Also, I'm cutting you off." She pulled her head back from his body and opened her mouth in a half-hearted attempt to protest, but he put a finger on her lips. "I have plans, all right? You aren't going to pass out until I _make _you." He kissed her forehead again before he pinched her ass and released her, leaving her in the bathroom to figure out how to make a phone call from her half-working phone.

Puck was still doing up his belt as he walked back into the living room, his head bent to see what he was doing rather than where he was walking. Quinn was standing the closest and gave him an icy little smirk. "You know, it was bad enough we could hear all your sex noises. The least you could do is be fully dressed before you come back out here."

"The least you can do is bite me, princess," he intoned easily.

"Sounds like Rachel had that covered," Sam offered smoothly as he approached with two bottles of beer in his hand. He reached one out toward Puck. Puck accepted it with a nod.

"Yes she does," Puck said with a nod and a laugh. Quinn's face crumpled in disgust but instead of issuing a comeback she took a drink from her plastic cup. Puck took a decent pull from his beer and saw Tina rooting through the game cabinet looking for something. She came up with a checker board, but didn't grab any game pieces.

Puck pointed and asked Sam. "What's up with that?"

"Oh," Sam said. "Someone suggested Spin the Bottle."

Quinn shook her head. "I maintain we're too paired up for that to be a good idea. Punches are going to fly," she tilted her head toward Puck for emphasis. "Especially if Rachel and Finn end up kissing, I predict major trouble."

Puck felt the color drain from his face just a little bit at even the thought. He and Rachel had fought plenty about things like hand placement and appropriate limits while singing and dancing love songs. It was a constant battle for him because she was "professional" and Finn was simply the opposing male lead. Puck could normally read people like a book (totally not an actual book, but…) but when he looked at Rachel and feelings were mixed in, something else happened. He usually couldn't be totally rational when it came to her. And when his line of thinking meant Quinn was right about something, it usually meant it was time for another drink. "Do we have any Jack?"

Sam nodded and pointed over to the bar. Puck wasted no time double fisting his way through a Jack on the slightly-melted-rocks and the rest of his beer, followed quickly by a Jack repeat and a fresh beer. He looked over the contents of the small counter on the bar and realized he was going to have his work cut out for him next week when he had to replace all this stuff before her dads got home. He wondered it Brittany would be able to help him again. One look at her, laughing at something with Artie, and he knew he'd have to wait a couple days to ask.

Rachel stumbled into the room as everyone was gathering in a big circle behind the couch. "Hey!" Her face lit up. "Spin the bottle!" Puck's stomach sank a little bit. There was no way he'd had enough to drink if she was that excited about this. He'd thought for sure she was still enough of a prude—well…with everyone but him—to put a stop to the lame game.

Instead, she sat down in the circle and motioned for him to join her. Okay, well, new plan. He slammed the rest of his beer and grabbed the last one of the six-pack that was out.

He offered up the empty bottle he'd just finished and since Tina was the one who suggested the game, she went first. They had quickly decided that the obligation was in place regardless of gender, so when Tina landed on Mercedes, it was quick and involved a lot of laughter. Mike sat next to Tina and landed on Tina. Their kiss was a little less innocent, but they pulled it together at the end.

Next to Mike was Brittany, and when she landed on Sam, Quinn's jaw set. Maybe Quinn _hadn't_ been talking about him when she talked about punches being thrown. After taking just a beat too long, Brittany and Sam pulled away and exchanged a smile. "That was hot," Brittany uttered. "Quinn is lucky."

At the mention of her own name, Quinn seemed to chill a little bit and settled for a dainty little sip from her drink. It was Rachel's turn and as she leaned forward to flip the bottle on the checkerboard, Santana said (loudly enough for everyone to hear even though Finn was sitting next to her) "Stop praying so loud, Finn." Finn responded by flipping her off.

Noah held his breath as the bottle slowed. It was opposite Finn in the circle, so that was a start. It looked like it was going to stop on Kurt and before he could get a comment about how bad that sucked for her out, the bottle seemed to catch just a little bit more momentum and it dragged to a stop pointing at Blaine. Kurt shot Blaine a wide-eyed glance. Blaine just laughed and put his hands up in the air and Rachel's smile spread slowly across her face.

Yeah, Noah wasn't sure what to make of the Dalton dude. Sure, it was one of the few times he had been out of uniform and he was dressed kind of like a fag, but he was usually more of a dude than Kurt could be. Blaine liked football and they had talked and had a beer or two more than once. He ultimately decided that Blaine probably wasn't gay enough for Noah to be okay with his girlfriend kissing the guy.

But by the time he came to that conclusion, Rachel was leaning over Kurt's lap and Blaine had met her in the middle. He couldn't see her face at all. Her hair had slid down over her shoulders and she was propped up on her own knuckles. All he noticed was when the timeframe had exceeded the three seconds he was willing to allow, but about that time, one of her hands came up off the ground and she pressed it against Blaine's face even as the group started catcalling or, depending on the person, voicing their complaints (mostly that was Kurt).

He watched when they pulled back and Blaine smiled broadly at her. "Your face tastes good," Blaine said and Puck's jaw set. What in the name of fuck? He felt strangely numb to the scene before him which he thought would be alternative to punching someone at Rachel's party. As she settled back next to him, her smile was still a little too wide and she was still looking at Blaine. He raised his eyebrows and watched her right about the time he realized everyone was looking at him.

He needed to take her upstairs for a good reassurance fuck, a reminder that she loved him, but he couldn't make himself move as he watched her, the numbness fading away as anger crept in. What he just witnessed was _not_ cool with him. Not in the least.

But it was his turn to spin, so he did so with a heavy sigh. When the bottle landed on Quinn, he tossed a glance over his shoulder to Rachel before he moved forward. Her eyes were wide and it looked like maybe she wasn't so sure this had been smart.

Well, he would really fucking drive that point home. Quinn leaned forward across the circle to meet him over the checkerboard and she smirked at him. If anyone here knew anything about revenge, it was her. That was quite often the name of her game. And they were familiar enough with one another that they could really get it if they wanted to.

So they did. If ever anyone needed Puck's lips to loosen them up, it was Quinn. The first thing he noticed as his mouth moved over hers was how different it was to kiss someone besides Rachel after all this time. Quinn tended to keep her mouth closed more, where Rachel's lips would swell and move. Her lip gloss seemed endless, tasted clean like mint, and she used her tongue and teeth in little teases.

Quinn, on the other hand, was more reserved at first and wore some sort of sugary lip gloss that made him want to gag a little bit as he tasted it. He reached up and tugged on the end of her hair; after years of wearing her hair in cheerleading ponytails, messing her hair up had become a huge turn on for her and he remembered that somewhere in a now faraway memory. He could also sense Rachel tensing behind him, because he knew she had seen that and he also knew his fingers tugging on her hair was her favorite thing.

As soon as he tugged on Quinn's free hair, her mouth opened a little more and her tongue darted into his mouth.

Rachel looked over at Sam. Rachel was sitting wide-eyed and watching the foreign image in front of her played out through a cloudy gaze. Sam was not as inhibited as Rachel and he finally tugged on the bottom of Quinn's shirt.

"Okay _enough_," he said in a low voice. Quinn pulled back and her eyes refocused. It was like it took her a second to remember what school year it actually was. She sat back down next to Sam, looking over at him and mouthing her apology.

Puck sat back down next to Rachel and looked at her with a smirk. She set her jaw and shook her head before she turned and fled up the stairs.

Finn was staring, like maybe he was debating whether he should go after Rachel or try to strangle Puck first, and everyone was looking with some reaction that could be classified between shock or fear that he was going to go all fight club on Blaine.

Noah decided going after Rachel was probably the best way to work out his anger since it was her fault. Without a word to anyone, he started moving to the stairs, not even fully standing up until he reached the bottom one and then hauling his ass up them two at a time with skill that surprised him considering the major drinkage had slammed into him in a wave of dizziness as he moved.

He heard her bedroom door slam shut right about the time he got to the top of the stairs he was on, so he hooked around the banister and continued up the next flight of stairs easily, fueled by temper.

He didn't knock on the door, just went into the room and closed the door behind him with a heavy slam. Rachel had flung herself into the middle of her bed and pressed her face into the covers. Her shoulders weren't shaking and she wasn't sobbing or anything.

He waited a minute with his arms folded across his chest tightly as he watched her breathe. When she didn't move, he reminded her he was standing there. "Rachel…"

"Go _away_!" She said forcefully, her words still muffled into the pillow.

"No."

"I said leave!" She sat up and threw the pillow at him. It missed and hit the wall about two feet to his left.

He pressed his lips together. "So you're into Blaine now? Whatever," he said. He rolled his eyes. "I guess you can fucking call me if that shit doesn't work out." He pulled on the doorknob and yanked the door open before he finished his thought. "Which it won't since he's a fag, but whatever Rachel. It was nice knowing you."

"At least I'm not still harboring feelings for my ex!" She seethed.

"Oh that's a line of bullshit and we both fucking know it," he growled, turning around to face her. "And me and Quinn… well, we weren't really ever together. It was all just…" he shook his head.

"It was 'all just' you had a baby and considered playing house together. That's inordinately better than the fact that I might have continuing feelings for an ex who I turned down so I could be with you. Whatever, _Puck_."

It was the one of the first times he could remember, and certainly not for a long time, when she had referred to him by his nickname. It was almost like Puck and Noah were too different guys; Puck didn't give a shit what everyone else thought other than they damn well better think he was a badass and he could kick the shit out of them for nothing other than his pleasure. Noah was the guy who sang "Brown-Eyed Girl" in class for his girlfriend and planned surprise, candlelit birthday hookups where he painted her body with strawberry juice. And strawberries weren't easy to find in December.

Well, if she wanted to call him Puck, he could be that for her. Her words flipped the switch.

"Do you really think he'd be okay with knowing my dick was in your mouth before his tongue?" He asked, his voice rising as he stopped trying to control it for her sake.

"It wasn't exactly a secret and maybe he kind of liked it. It actually fits into his area of interest, don'tcha think?" She replied sharply.

"Whatever, you just think you're hot enough to turn a guy straight."

She shook her head and folded her arms. "Well, I'm hot enough you haven't looked anywhere else," she said confidently as Finn's earlier words came back to her.

"That you know of," he said. And as the words left his mouth, he heard her breath catch. His heart thumped painfully and somehow squeezed all the air out of his lungs as his mouth hung open and he watched her. He knew he'd gone too far.

She opened her mouth to try speaking, but clamped it back shut again. She tried again and failed for the second time. There were tears in her eyes. It looked like she was refusing to blink so they wouldn't spill over in front of him.

They had been in a state of suspended animation, but then Kurt was there with Finn right behind him, all pressing in right behind where Puck stood in the open door, still watching Rachel while she watched him.

Noah turned and ran right into Kurt.

"We can hear you guys clear downstairs," Kurt said. Puck's jaw was set and he tried to sidestep Kurt but Finn was there, blocking almost the hallway with one sideways stride.

"Give me your keys, man."

"I don't think so," Puck growled. "I'm fine."

"The hell you are," Finn said. "_Give me your keys_."

Puck tried to sidestep him, as Kurt had already moved into the bedroom to see if Rachel was any less stoic, but Finn matched his movement.

"I'm not asking. Give me your damn keys." Finn said, the words hard and steel in his eyes. Finn was a lot of things, but once he made up his mind he was actually pretty stubborn. Puck pulled the key ring out of his pocket and slapped it into Finn's open palm.

"Can I leave now, _Master_?" He sneered, getting right up in Finn's face. Finn just swung out to the side and watched him go.

Kurt came out of the room and tugged the door closed behind him.

"What happened?" Finn asked, his voice dropping to a whisper as he looked over Kurt's shoulder. He half hoped for a glimpse of Rachel and half didn't want to see.

"I don't know. She just told me to leave her alone."

Finn's head jerked to the side as he heard the front door close.

"She wasn't crying," Kurt said. "I think she was waiting for me to leave."

Finn blew out a long breath and leaned against the wall. He had told Puck once, a long time ago, that he was waiting for the mohawked former friend to drop the ball so he could take his chance with Rachel. It took Puck actually dropping the ball for Finn to realize it wasn't what he had actually wanted.

"I'd better get back downstairs," Kurt said. "God only knows what they're doing without at least one sober person down there."

Finn just nodded and looked again at Rachel's door. Kurt nodded too and then left. Finn slid down the wall, just opposite her closed bedroom door, trying to pretend he didn't hear her crying and trying to pretend none of this had happened. It wasn't her birthday. They weren't here right now. And for as many times in the last two years as he wished he could change places with Puck, right now wasn't one of them. He wished there were anything he could do to get it back to how it should be, how it was before his best friends were both heartbroken and alone. So he waited. He would sit there until he could fix it.

What? He would. He totally would. He just hoped he actually could.


	7. Chapter 7: Get It Stuck in Your Head

_**A/N: Thanks a hundred more times for the reads, reviews, favorites and follows. The response to this story is seriously amazing and fun. Please keep it coming! **__This part is a little more disjointed than the rest and this song is a bit of a stretch for Rachel, but for some reason I thought it fit what I would picture their relationship as being. This is set just slightly after the "Get It Under Control" part I posted a little bit back so you might want to look over that one real quick as a refresher. _

_Brief warning/reminder: This story is rated M. There is no smut in this part, but there are lots of dirty words in varying sizes. Also, thanks to __**Paceismyhero**__for her help coming up with naughty words. Lizzie, I hope you notice that, as promised, I kept my fic-mitts off the word you dibsed. I might be pushing the timeframe with the song a bit because I think it was barely released when I have this set, but it's __**Stuck Like Glue**__by __**Sugarland.**__ It was a real bitch to match up lyrics for. _

_**Disclaimer: I'm so over saying this. This will be the last one on this story. I don't own Glee.**_

* * *

**Get It Stuck In Your Head**

Rachel had been studying the paperback book for the last two hours. She rolled over from her stomach to her back on the bed and stretched, groaning appreciatively at the fantastic feeling of her abdominal muscles stretching out. She had cut her focus on everything physical lately so she could study for the PSATs. Of course she maintained her early-morning elliptical schedule but that was her only real form of exercise and even glee wouldn't make the jump to 'extra active' until the beginning of November to prepare for the sectional competition in the middle of the month.

Noah, on the other hand, had been keeping up with longer and longer football practices that would (hopefully) culminate in the November playoffs. But that was still about a month away. He told her he hoped for a football scholarship for college, but they both knew the truth—McKinley, though much improved with the addition of Coach Bieste, did not have the kind of football program that attracted scouts from universities. If Puck and Finn (admittedly, she figured Karofsky and Azimio had similar goals, although she really couldn't have cared less as long as they were far, far away from her) really wanted a scholarship, their best hope was getting a good run in through the playoffs. That way, they would be playing schools that _were_ more likely to attract football scouts so they would at least get noticed.

The short of it was they had been so busy they had barely spent any time together since their relationship had taken its more serious turn. Limited time translated into even less sex—and in some ways, it was making them both a little grumpy. Funny how you could miss something that was barely a habit.

"You know, it probably wouldn't kill you to study. PSATs are on _Saturday_, Noah," she said simply even as she closed her eyes. She had seen the magazine he was…well, not even reading. She had seen the magazine he was idly flipping through, and she was pretty sure Sports Illustrated wasn't going to help him out much with the upcoming test.

"Why would you think I'm taking that crap?" He asked honestly, never lifting his eyes from the glossy page in front of him.

"You keep telling me you want to get into college? Maybe you should put some effort into it besides athletics. Did you ever think of that?"

"Tests suck ass, Berry. Why would I volunteer to go sit through one?"

She rolled back up onto her stomach so she could actually look at him. "What if I asked you to?"

"No offense, but I'm not pussy-whipped enough to do that just because you said so. Other things, maybe, but not go in _early_ and _on a Saturday_." He shrugged. "Besides, that's the holy Sabbath and I've got to rest sometime. If it was good enough for God, it's good enough for me."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, like I'm supposed to believe you're sitting it out in the name of religion," she said as she shut the test prep book she'd been looking at. She picked it up and tossed it at him (probably aiming right for his nose if he knew that haughty little tone of voice). He caught it with a raised eyebrow. "Quiz me."

"Quiz you," he repeated. "I didn't come over here to be a tutor." Her eyes met his and he snorted a little. "Okay, I didn't come over here to be _that _kind of a tutor."

She tilted her head to the side. "Then why did you come over here?"

"Oh, that's cute," he said as he pulled the book open. He muttered something she couldn't make out under his breath (because, he knew, he wasn't saying actual words but just making his point). "What's four times six?"

She leveled a look at him that was just shy of spitting fire. "If you aren't going to help me, you can leave now. I have studying to do."

"Why does it have to be one or the other?" He asked. He closed the book and turned to set it on her desk. "Let's do something that doesn't suck."

She tipped her head to the side and attempted to look annoyed but her total inability to fight a smile made the effort a fail. "What did you have in mind that isn't sex since my door is open and my dad is downstairs?"

"Yeah, I know you can't shut up when we do that," he said easily and he let his eyes skate across the wall from her door, around the bed and back to her. "What about the glee assignment?"

She groaned and flopped back over on her back. "I don't want to talk about that again."

"Oh, come on!" He said. "I think we were up to two dirty dates and I'll change the oil in your car for the swap."

"I'm not trading sexual favors for a glee assignment." She dropped her head back so she was looking at him upside down. He was still hot and she sighed. She really wished her dad wasn't home. "I will, however, help you get unstuck and find a showtune."

"I still can't believe Schue assigned me to a showtune. That's bullshit," he groaned as he kicked his feet up onto her vanity. She was still flipped over, watching him upside down.

"I got country. Mine is worse," she said. "I guess I'm going to have to sing something whiny."

"If you can explain how 'Don't Rain on My Parade' is not the whiniest song ever, you can keep that argument without me harassing you about it, princess."

She sighed and sat up properly. "Are you really going to start about this again?"

"I won't if you trade me," he said easily.

"It could be worse," she pointed out. "Finn has to do a song in a foreign language."

"I'm not sure if that's worse for him or us," Noah responded dryly. He dropped his feet from the vanity. "What did you have in mind for this song? And keep my Jewish streak alive."

Her smile broke open. "You know how I love a challenge."

"Well, of course," he said with a smirk. He leaned forward on his feet, closing the small gap between her vanity and the edge of the bed where she sat quickly. He dropped his arms on either side of her so he was in her personal space. His smirk bloomed into a smile when he heard her breath catch. He was pretty sure he could get her to trade almost anything for a sexual favor with the right motivation. "I know my audience," he mumbled, his mouth hovering above her neck.

Her eyes fluttered closed as she tilted her head away from him, unconsciously giving him access to the pulse point that she wanted him to massage with his tongue. As he moved down to press his mouth to the exact spot, it was like something broke over her. She opened her eyes and righted her head, then rested her hands on his shoulder.

"Avenue Q," she said simply.

He blinked, not as quick to reroute his thought process as she was. "Wh-what the hell?" He stammered.

"Um… 'I'm Not Wearing Underwear Today'," she said with a smile.

"Excellent," he said, that cocky smile spreading all the way across his cheeks as he renewed his effort to tongue her neck.

She finally understood what he was thinking, her reflexes slowed by his proximity alone, and she laughed. "No! That's the song you should sing."

He backed away and studied her seriously. "How do you even know about a song like that? And is it real?"

"Of course it's real," she said. She planted a quick kiss on his lips and moved to queue up her iTunes.

He totally felt like he'd lost the upper hand here. Why was he always losing the upper hand with her? It was starting to be seriously fucking annoying.

It took all of ten seconds for him to decide to do the song, which was about a third of its total length. As she explained that the cowriter of the entire show was Jewish, and it would be the perfect protest sort of song—afterward, Schue would never make him go solo on one again. And fuck if Rachel Berry didn't get him a little excited about singing a showtune.

"So since I helped _you_," she said slowly as she turned back around to face him, "maybe you could help me with vocabulary?"

He raised an eyebrow at her, but right about then her Dad appeared in the doorway.

"Dinnertime, Rachel. Is Noah staying tonight?"

Rachel looked from her Dad to Noah and he just shook his head but then turned to address her dad himself.

"No, thank you, sir. I have to get home and help my sister with her homework."

Rachel bit back her laugh because… right. He didn't even do his own homework, let alone help his sister. More often than not, _she_ had been the one to help his sister since school (and _they) _had started. Her dad excused himself and she rounded on Noah with a grin.

"That was a pretty terrible excuse," she said.

"Yeah, well…" he shrugged and then skipped over the teasing he had been doing before her bed to meet her in the middle of the floor for a real kiss. He was actually a little surprised when her tongue slid against his own, forcing his mouth open, and she ran her hands up his chest.

"Maybe someday football practice won't be so long and you can come over before my dad gets home," she said when she pulled away.

"Maybe you can meet me in the shower," he said, diving in for another kiss and pressing his body against her lean length.

She broke away, really broke away, and bit her lip as she smiled at him. "_Maybe_ isn't a word on my vocabulary list."

He winked at her as he turned to grab his jacket from its hanging spot on her doorknob. "Mine either, babe. I'll call you later."

* * *

Two days later and all of the maybes had stayed maybes and no personal time had actually come to fruition. They had barely even managed to talk on the phone, and even when they did, he sounded a little frustrated that her studying schedule was getting in the way of something he wanted to try (phone sex). He was even more frustrated when she told him that phone sex wasn't particularly on a list of her fantasies.

She frowned as she tugged her locker open. Were they just kidding themselves here? They were so different and were so busy she was really starting to wonder and it was doing nothing for her focus in other areas. She hadn't decided what stupid country song to sing for glee yet and the week was half over. She had barely been able to study for PSATs, she had bowed out on family night with her dads, and now she couldn't even remember what class she was gathering items for.

Her eyes automatically went to the shelf up top and she tried to clear her brain anywhere away from phone sex and toward what books she would need for her next two classes. She just had English and then glee, so she stretched up to grab the textbook she would need for the first one. As she stretched her arm up, she saw something taped to the very back of the locker. She was totally distracted and redirected her arm, barely retracting it to pull the papers up toward her face before Santana happened by and snapped the locker shut right in front of her face, barely missing her fingers, and then continued on without saying a word. Whatever random Cheerio was walking with Santana looked back over her shoulder with a smirk, but Rachel didn't react at all, didn't even look up, as she sank back against the lockers, looking at the page in her hand.

It was absolutely covered in Puck's scratchy handwriting and she had to squint her eyes to make out any words. To make matters worse, he had written it in red marker. He told her once the only time he wrote, on those rare occasions he actually deigned to do a homework assignment, that he did it in red just to piss his teachers off.

_Study __this__ vocabulary. There will be a quiz later and you'd better ace it OR ELSE._

She let out a scoff, finally looking up from the page. What in the world was he up to? She flicked her eyes back down to the page.

_abstinence- not an option for you anymore_

_amomaxia - fucking in a parked car_

_amychesis – scratching the shit out of your partner while you fuck _

_autoeroticism—fucking yourself_

_bondage—fucking while someone is tied up_

_brassirothesaurias – bra collector like me_

_coition—fucking_

_colpoquette—a woman with perfect boobs like yourself who knows it and works them _

_copulate – fancy way of saying fuck_

Her jaw dropped. They were all big, sexual words. And they were in alphabetical order. He must've been joking when he said alphabetical order was for nerds like her. She was almost afraid to look again.

_defloration-popping her cherry_

_eunoterpsia- sex as a life goal (totally on board with this)_

_fellatio- blow job_

Her eyes got wider as they scanned the list. He had put some serious work into this. The words covered the entire front of the page. She cast a glance up at the almost-empty hallway and wondered what would happen if she actually got caught by a teacher with this in her hand. Well… if the teacher were Sue, that would be easy. She would be utterly humiliated and it would probably involve either a microphone or a bullhorn. She caught sight of one, in bigger letters than the rest, and smiled.

_melolagnia—when music makes you want to fuck_

The bell rang and she immediately turned back toward her locker. He had just made her late for class!

She spent most of English daydreaming and a song from the radio popped into her head. She wondered if she could put it together quickly enough to perform in glee. The song itself wasn't that hard and she managed to doodle some rough sheet music for it while her teacher wasn't looking. And while it wasn't true that this song necessarily promoted…whatever that word was…it summed up everything she thought about him. It hadn't happened a lot in the last several weeks, but whenever she had started doubting if she really wanted their relationship or if she even had time for it, he found some totally _Puck_ way (there wasn't a lot of 'Noah' in the number of times he'd cursed on that page) to make her laugh and to make her wiggle in her seat—another way to get stuck in her head no matter what else she was doing. The suggestive nature of some of those words had certainly done _that._

Was there some way she could get even, a way to return the favor? She could find a way to rub up against him during the choreography. As she started to plan and further blocked out her teacher she realized she had fallen right into his trap. Payback was really, really going to suck for him.

That was her frame of mind as she walked into Glee that day. She actually wanted to perform the song, even if it was on the fly. The music was so easy she was positive the band kids could sight read it. The choreography would kind of take care of itself. It was a song she'd already thought of doing (once she heard it on the radio this morning), so she felt as prepared as she really needed to be. She didn't want to spend any more time on the stupid country assignment anyway. There was no benefit in it for her; she wanted to focus more on ballads because she already knew where her strengths were.

Puck was already there in the choir room, his chair tipped back on two legs so he could look at Santana, who was behind him and talking. Even as he was tipped back in the relaxed position, she could hear the end of Santana's rant and his replying words as she entered the room.

"—and then she just stood there."

"Yeah, well…I've told you to stop doing shit like that to her or I'll cut you."

Rachel tried to fight the smile, but his eyes were closed and his hands were folded against his stomach. If she hadn't heard him speak, she would assume he was dozing off. That's how casually he had issued the threat.

She looked casually around the rest of the room, trying to see who else was there. She could barely make out Finn hunched over something in Schue's office and could only assume Schue was in there with him. It quite likely meant she should go see what they were doing. She sighed, and noticed Quinn hovering over a folder on the side of the room opposite where Puck and Santana were sitting. Sam was sitting next to her and talking.

In a split second before she went to see what Schue and Finn were working on, she walked over to stand right in front of Puck. She put her hands on his knees so his chair jolted forward and his eyes flew open in surprise, but she didn't give him a chance to say anything before she pressed her lips to his.

"Well, hello," he smarmed when she pulled away and smiled. "Found the list, did ya?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I have some words to add to it, too."

"Well, let's go. We don't really _need_ this class." He leaned forward to kiss her again. Rachel was vaguely aware of Santana scoffing behind them and could feel the fiery heat from her eyes.

Rachel shook her head and pulled away just enough to speak. "I don't cut class and you know it."

He smiled. "You're such a good little schoolgirl," he muttered, shaking his head. His hand gripped at the waist on her shirt as she leaned forward a little more. He was like an addiction for her. How could she possibly think this was a bad idea? Maybe it was a bad idea she'd gotten so hooked this quickly.

When Rachel's arms slipped around his neck, he parted his legs for her easily so she could move closer, and Santana's annoyed sound was enough to pull them apart.

"I believe I clearly told you to shut the fuck up, Satan," he growled, tipping his head back a little bit.

Rachel kissed his cheek. "It's okay. This isn't really appropriate and I have to go see what Finn and Mr. Schuester need before class starts. I have a surprise for you anyway so we can't leave." She let her voice drop down. "As much as I want to try out your A's."

"Later," he promised, his eyes slipping closed and his words a growl.

"Later," she promised, already having something in mind.

He watched her as she left, wondering exactly which word she'd seen on his list that had given her an idea for a surprise.

It wasn't long before he had his chance to find out, dragging himself to sitting as she moved in front of the class and began her explanation.

"Well…" she started, pressing her hands together. "Mr. Schue assigned me a country song and I have to admit that it's been kind of hard for me to figure out." She looked quickly to Puck and then looked down. "It isn't the only thing in my life I've been thinking about a lot and trying to figure out."

He frowned a little. What the fuck? He was pretty sure they had worked all this shit out last week at that party. Did she find out he'd been in Jason's room with Brittany once upon a time?

"Anyway, I think I made it too hard and I hope I'm never, ever assigned country music again unless it's part of the ensemble." With those words, she gestured over to the band kids, who started the bouncy little song on her cue. She tapped her foot and looked down at the ground, unable to fight the shy little smile as she hummed the beginning. Once she started the words, though, she was looking right at Noah.

_Absolutely nobody knows me better_

_No one that can make me feel so good_

_How did we stay so long together?_

_When everybody, everybody said we never would_

_And just when I, I start to think they're right…the love has died_

She brought her hands to her chest and rocked back and forth in time with the music.

_There you go makin' my heart beat again, heart beat again, heart beat again_

_There you go makin' me feel like a kid_

_Won't you do it, do it one time?_

_There you go pullin' me right back in, right back in, right back in_

_And I know I'm never lettin' this go_

_I'm stuck on you, whoa-oh whoa-oh stuck like glue_

_You and me baby, we're stuck like glue_

_Whoa-oh, whoa-oh stuck like glue_

_You and me baby, we're stuck like glue_

Most of the class had heard the song on the radio and started in on the last part, singing along and rocking back and forth, pulling the less familiar friends into their rocking back and forth and jumping to the bouncy song.

_Somedays I don't feel like tryin'_

_Some days you know I wanna just give up_

_When it doesn't matter who's right, fight about it all night…had enough_

_You give me that look… _

"_I'm sorry baby, let's make up"_

_You do that thing that makes me laugh… and just like that_

She looked over at him and he could feel his pants tighten up a little bit. _Let's make up_ was something that had taken on a whole new meaning for him in their short but hot-and-cold relationship. Especially when it came with that look attached. Even if they hadn't been fighting. He folded his arms and tried to keep his face straight, because breaking right now would mean she was in charge. Fuck if she could get the upper hand with a cute little song when they weren't even fighting. Even if she looked like that.

_There you go makin' my heart beat again, heart beat again, heart beat again_

_There you go makin' me feel like a kid_

_Won't you do it, do it one time?_

_There you go pullin' me right back in, right back in, right back in_

_And I know I'm never lettin' this go_

_I'm stuck on you, whoa-oh whoa-oh stuck like glue_

_You and me baby, we're stuck like glue_

_Whoa-oh, whoa-oh stuck like glue_

_You and me baby, we're stuck like glue_

She was moving around the now, and as the beat to the song changed, she was right in front of him, her hips swaying in a pretty suggestive pattern. He looked up at her, maybe a little cautiously and wondering what she was doing as she twirled, her hair dancing almost separate from the rest of her body.

_Whoa-oh, whoa-oh you almost stay out_

_Two stuck together from the ATL out whoa-oh, whoa-oh_

_Feelin' kinda sick, just a spoonful of sugar make you better real quick_

_I say whoa-oh, whoa-oh whatcha gonna do with that, whoa-oh whoa-oh_

_Come on over here with that sugar sticky sweet stuff, come on give me that stuff_

_Everybody wants some melodies that get stuck up in your head_

_Whoa-oh, whoa-oh up in your head, whoa-oh whoa-oh up in your head_

_Whoa-oh, whoa-oh, up in your head_

_Whoa-oh, whoa-oh, whoa-oh whoa-oh stuck like glue_

_You and me together say it's all I wanna do_

He felt her lean down behind him, her hair brushing over his shoulders as she bent down and placed a wet kiss on his cheek. He fought the urge to smile, willingly letting her unfold his arms. The urge to smile faded as he felt her tie his fucking wrists together with something behind the fucking chair. She had tied him up? In the middle of class? Really?

"You forgot a word," she said quickly as their classmates launched into the next quick part ahead of her. "Helotry. _Look it up_." She ran her hand quickly over his Mohawk as she skipped back down the raised step to his seat and into the middle of the room to finish off her song, the rest of their glee members up and out of their seats, bouncing around and accentuating her playful little "oh" sounds and clapping in all the right places.

_There you go makin' my heart beat again, heart beat again, heart beat again_

_There you go makin' me feel like a kid_

_Won't you do it, do it one time?_

_There you go pullin' me right back in, right back in, right back in_

_And I know I'm never lettin' this go_

_I'm stuck on you, whoa-oh whoa-oh stuck like glue_

_You and me baby, we're stuck like glue_

_Whoa-oh, whoa-oh stuck like glue_

_You and me baby, we're stuck like glue_

_Whoa-oh, whoa-oh stuck like glue_

_You and me baby, we're stuck like glue_

His foot was tapping, goddamn and God love her. He was going to have this girl and this stupid motherfucking song stuck in his head for a long time. Lots longer than he was going to be stuck in this chair, that was for damn sure. And once he had untied himself, it was _on_.


	8. Chapter 8: Get It Going

_**A/N: **__ I'm still seriously blown away with the response to this story so far. I've been trying to keep up with the personal thank yous and if I have failed to do so, I'm sincerely sorry. I've decided to reward you with a part that… well, really doesn't live up to the M rating. Ha! Also, this was inspired by the song __**Someday **__by __**Cary Brothers. **__It's an awesome song and if I do say so myself, sets the mood quite nicely so you might want to let it play in the background as you read._

* * *

**Get It Going**

The door was open, Leroy had sent him upstairs, but he still felt a little guilty when he walked in and saw Rachel obviously engrossed in something on her computer. He'd been sending her text messages all afternoon, in another one of those days when it felt like his skin was crawling and just itching for some sort of action. He had to do _something_. It was the curse of summer and it seemed like since his two weeks at football camp, the few days left until school started were going to be un-fucking-bearable. And when he'd tried to think of someone to pass that time with, she had been the only person that came to mind. It seemed like she had something else going on, and he had been replaced with her MacBook. That was not okay.

He tapped out a knock on the open door and she turned her head toward him.

"Hi, Noah," she said. Her voice didn't sound like there was a problem.

She just didn't answer him then? Like, no fucking reply? Serious? No one just ignored the Puckerone without a problemo. He raised his eyebrows.

"Hi. Whatcha doin?" He asked, trying really hard to keep his voice curious over showing his true annoyance.

She sighed and spun her chair around to look at him. It was one of those chairs where the bottom looked like a spider on wheels but it stayed in one spot and just the pole in the middle rotated. He wondered if maybe he could take it apart and put it back together. It would at least give him something do with his hands. He didn't know why his mom kept taking him to get tested for ADHD. All he needed to do was keep his hands busy.

As his eyes roamed from the spider at the bottom up to the chair, then to the girl sitting on the chair, he had to fight a groan. The idea of keeping his hands busy wasn't the best idea when it was just the two of them, because he had a whole list of ways to do that in his head—and fucking your childhood best friend over that way twice in under a year was probably not cool.

Consequences or some shit. Getting older was a serious drag.

"I'm just trying to figure out if there's anything I still need to do for college," she sighed. "I can't believe it never occurred to me, but I think I'm going to audition for Julliard."

He raised his eyebrows. It was a perfect summer day, and she was inside, staring at her computer and making plans for college that was at least a year and a half away? Fuck that noise.

"No. You're coming with me," he said flatly.

She scowled and looked down at herself. "I'm hardly dressed to leave the house."

He snorted his amusement as his eyes followed her lead and looked down her fine form. One thing he had learned about Rachel Berry that he didn't know before this summer was that the tank tops she wore with her pajamas were almost as small as the skirts she wore to school. And she didn't wear a bra with them, either. And no, he wasn't looking at the way her nipples had tightened under the fabric of the grey shirt with lacy straps when she noticed where his eyes went. Because she always noticed shit like that but only sometimes said anything; today it seemed like he might get a pass because the fabric tented under his gaze. "You're not even dressed to leave the bedroom."

She stood up and he realized her silky shorts were not much bigger than her tank top. The red material settled, resting high up on her thigh. She must've known there was a logical path for his eyes to take because she just folded her arms against his chest as he looked down at her legs.

She raised her eyebrows and waited. She wasn't as uncomfortable under his sweeping glance as she thought she might be. She had been pretty sure a couple of times that he was staring at her, but this was the first time she _knew_. And this wasn't quite the way she had imagined attention from a boy. This wasn't how she felt when Finn said he loved her.

Ugh. She'd waited three months to even acknowledge all that he said and now she was standing here watching Puck watch her and wonder how, even if she hadn't showered or even bothered to change out of her pajamas, just the way he was looking at her made her feel sexy and alive and…she was messed up and decidedly _not_ used to that feeling. He was right. They needed to get out of the house and his stare just dropped that feeling right into her gut and turned into something solid.

They had slipped up and made out a few weeks ago. Well, okay. It wasn't really slipping up, now was it? There had been one day a little while ago and that had started it all. During one of their Halo tutoring sessions (her dads had run right out and bought her an XBox 360 because they were so thrilled she was showing an interest in something sedate), just about a week after all the stuff with Beth and Shelby had come crashing down around her, they had started making stupid bets. If Puck lasted until an ammunition drop without being killed, Rachel would cut his hair for him. If Rachel lasted until their next mission popped up in the corner of the screen, he would make her popcorn and _not_ throw it down her shirt.

Her dads had left because they had play tickets to a show all the way up in Cleveland at some outdoor theater. The bets got more interesting. The light coming in through the slats of the blinds covering the window behind them changed and they didn't bother to flip the overhead lights on as their video game marathon continued.

Eventually, Rachel's eyes were dry and hurting from the hours of incessant television light in a dark room and she declared herself 'out'. They flipped over to the DVR and, before either of them knew what happened, Puck was breathing on her neck and his gaze wasn't a whole lot different from the one she was seeing now.

That look started a whole bunch of stuff she just wasn't ready to deal with yet. Right. So, 'out of the house' it was.

"I'm going to shower. If you could find a way to entertain yourself that doesn't engage the parent filter on my computer, that would be great," she said with a smirk before she walked, arms still folded across her chest, to her bathroom.

"Do I have to use your _computer_ to entertain myself?" He asked, his voice rising to carry easily to where she was at even as she closed the bathroom door.

"I'm locking the door! Don't even think about it!" She yelled through the four-panel divider. She flipped the water on so she didn't have to hear whatever other garbage came out of his mouth. He was obviously in some sort of a mood, and she was not in one that corresponded well. They needed to get out of the house so they didn't kill each other. Or _worse_.

She was already undressed and in the shower before she realized she hadn't brought clothes in with her. That was going to be awkward.

After she verbally pushed Puck out of her room long enough to get dressed (and really, finding words that made him move stretched the limits of her vast vocabulary, almost to the point of expletive), she was ready in less than ten minutes. He arched an eyebrow at her as he looked over her attire, but didn't offer a comment other than to say he knew what they were going to do and it would require him driving.

It was only a few minutes later when he swung out to the highway and she looked over at him curiously. Obviously she had expected them to stay, you know, _within town limits_.

"Where are you taking me?"

"Don't worry, Berry. They'll find the body."

"Yours?" She asked with raised eyebrows.

"Snap," he replied, looking over at him with amusement.

She rolled her eyes and just turned her head to look out the window and watch the scenery that was flying by. It had been unseasonably warm the past couple of weeks, which was saying a lot given that it was August. She had chosen as sparse of clothing as she felt comfortable wearing, but as they hit the open road she was starting to doubt the prudence in that. The sleeveless, white cotton v-neck shirt and the grey jersey skirt hardly seemed adequate for most of the possibilities that were flying through her mind. Where in the world was he taking them?

He turned up the radio, allowing the speakers to flood his truck with the annoying sound of loud rock music. She turned toward him with a grimace, but he didn't even let her complaint come out of her open mouth.

"No," he said flatly. "If you're in my car, you're listening to Stone Temple Pilots." He reached his hand up to turn the music up even louder. She countered by rolling the window down and what—what that supposed to be punishment?

So what if she yanked her hair out of its lazy ponytail and the next thing he knew, he'd gone a solid twenty seconds without his eyes on the road. It didn't escape his knowledge that her knee was bouncing in time with the beat of the song she seemed so bent out of shape about. He made a quick mental note to give her shit about later and then turned to focus on, you know, not fucking killing them out on the 30.

Once he crossed over to the Van Wert/Paulding ramp, she turned toward him, but paused to turn the radio down before she spoke up.

"The civic theater is the only reason I can think of that we'd be going this way," she said firmly. "So what is the plan here?"

"We are not going to the civic theater, as much as I'm sure that ruins your day. The plan is for you to shut your trap for just a few more minutes and then you'll be able to see where we're going."

She swore to herself right then and there that she was _not_ letting Noah Puckerman any further under her skin because he might've been too far in already. And she was not going to give him the satisfaction of saying another word, even if the curiosity was eating a hole through her brain and making her wiggle a little bit in her seat.

"What's your problem? Do you need to take a leak or something?" He flipped a cautious glance over to her.

She didn't respond, just kept her eyes looking at something out the window. He felt the need, the same one he always felt around her, to press it further until she either laughed or exploded. Sometimes he cared which one it was; today wasn't one of those days.

" 'Cause if that's the case, you're just going to have to pop a squat or something."

The noise of her breathing out indicated an explosion.

"No, Noah, I'm not going to 'pop a squat'," she started. "This is completely ridiculous and chances are extremely strong that I'm not even getting out of this truck once we arrive at whatever destination you've decided on without my input."

Yes, she used air quotes. No, she didn't appear to be kidding. He snorted his amusement and shook his head at the same time as he guided the truck over to park on the curb. He unclicked his seatbelt and turned to face her.

"Think back with me for, like, a week or something. We were playing that stupid NBA game and you were talking about how you couldn't shoot a basketball in real life, so why would you be able to do it in 'three dimensional computer animation'?" (He totally used air quotes and watched her set her jaw. He was only kind of making fun of her, too. Totally worth it.) Her arms were still folded tightly against her chest and he was fighting not to look at her boobs as he waited for her to nod, which she did. She was at least looking at him out of the corner of her eye as he continued. "So I'm going to teach you how to shoot a basketball."

She instantly relaxed. "Oh," she said simply. She looked down at herself. "I kind of wish you had said something sooner. I'm hardly dressed appropriately."

"Are you _ever_?" He asked simply. He was satisfied he wouldn't have to fireman carry her out of the truck at least and he moved to get out. She hurried to do the same and was unsurprised to see him rifling in the bed of the pickup. It looked kind of like a sports store in the toolbox he carried and he quickly produced a basketball lined with alternating sections of red and black rubber.

"So why are we clear in Van Wert?"

He rolled his eyes then looked at her expectantly as he slammed the lid closed on the box and moved around the backside of the truck to join her.

"Well….there may or may not have been an incident at West Lima Elementary meaning I have to stay at least 100 meters away until further notice."

"Are you serious? What did you do?"

"Nothing….at least, nothing anyone can _prove_." He cleared his throat and gestured to the slightly dilapidated school before them. "Besides, this school is closed down now, so no one would notice or care if we're here."

"And why do you know that there's a vacant elementary school just waiting for some random act of vandalism thirty miles away from your house?"

"Cousins," he said simply. They had been walking slowly toward the edge of the school property as they chatted and he gestured to the _padlocked chain link fence_. "All right, Berry. Up and over."

She looked to the lock that was already starting to rust over and the back to him. "No."

He let out an exaggerated sigh before he switched the basketball to balance between his wrist and hip. He stuck his free hand out to her, palm up. "Fine; give me a bobby pin, then."

"Why do you know what a bobby pin is?" She demanded.

He gave a huge sigh and shot her the stink eye. Sometimes, swear to J-Man, she was worse than his fucking little sister. "It doesn't matter. Just... do you have one?"

"I'm not giving you one."

"Come on. I'll just... let us in." He looked around.

"No! That's against the law!" She protested loudly, and she started in with the arm waving to punctuate her point.

He kind of wondered why she thought having her whole body involved in her arguments made them stronger. Her big voice normally got her thoughts across way faster than her tiny body.

"Rachel..."

"Noah..."

"Come on," he said, shaking his outstretched hand a little to get her attention back on the fact that he was, you know, waiting.

"NO!" She said firmly, folding her arms again.

He sighed and flipped the basketball up into both his hands. "All right, then up and over."

"Pardon me?"

"Up and over," he said. "Come on. I ain't got all day."

"Okay, no. First of all, that is completely improper grammar. Secondly, this skirt is not conducive to fence climbing."

"The hell it's not."

"NOAH!"

"Come on, just climb the fence. There's nowhere else to go in the middle of stupid Lima in the middle of the sucky summer and you know it just as well as I do."

"We aren't in Lima anymore," she said. She let out a sigh and cast a glance one direction then the other in the basically deserted vicinity. There were houses around, sure, but there were no real signs of life. No kids playing, no traffic. And that could've been because she'd been standing outside for approximately three minutes and she could already feel herself starting to sweat.

"Beside the point," he said. Then, in a movement so quick he barely noticed, she reached out, grabbing the basketball right out of his hands to chuck it over her shoulder and into the street.

He looked a little confused but he could hear a car coming now so he darted away to retrieve the ball. As he did that, she turned and quickly scaled the fence. The ball had gone into the gutter across the street and rolled, so it took him a second to jog back with it. By then, she had climbed the fence entirely and stood on the other side waiting for him.

He just shook his head as she smirked at him. He gave the ball a one-handed toss and she caught it neatly before he scaled the fence with unnervingly practiced skill.

"You could've waited," he said simply as he brushed his hands on his shorts.

"You could've told me what we were doing so I would've worn shorts," she replied. "But I have a feeling either way I would've had to endure your eyes on my behind the whole time."

He snorted. "Yeah, well, I can't help it if it's my favorite thing to look whenever you're around," he said. She narrowed her eyes at him, but didn't reply before she stalked off toward the basketball hoops that were in the opposite corner. He rolled his eyes and followed.

She kind of seemed like she was in a bad fucking mood. That meant this had been an epically bad fucking idea. Now they were thirty miles from home, stranded in the heat, with very little to do for entertainment. Okay…very little _she_ would be willing to do for entertainment. He followed her and…well… who was he kidding? Her ass _was_ one of his favorite places to stare and for good reason, so shut up about it. She had a great ass and the skirts she wore, especially the one she was wearing now, did very little to actually hide that.

Once she reached the basketball court, she turned around and chucked the ball at him almost immediately. He grunted as it made unexpected contact with his stomach—and it had unexpected force behind it. She then gathered her hair back into its former ponytail and looped the holder from her wrist around the bottom part to keep it out of her face.

"So what am I doing here?" She asked.

He tossed the ball back to her. He was unsurprised that she caught it easily. If there was one thing she had proven over time, it's that she was basically physically capable of whatever she tried. It was just a matter of getting her to shut up long enough to actually try something.

"Shoot that," he said simply.

She turned around and threw the basketball almost immediately with no sort of lining up, no sort of control. Unsurprisingly, it bounced off the rim—fast—and started rolling toward the grass off to the side of the set of four basketball hoops. She turned toward him expectantly.

"Well, go get it," he said. She rolled her eyes and took off after the ball, jogging even though she was wearing flip-flops.

She came back and balanced the ball on her hip to wait.

"Okay," he said, holding his hands out for the ball. "Watch me." She tossed the ball to him and he moved to approximately where the foul line would've been at some point on the worn gravel. He looked down to dribble the ball a couple times and then pulled up and arched the ball in a perfect shot.

He turned to look at her. Her expression was unreadable. "Nothin' but net. You think you can do that?" He took two quick steps forward to take the bouncing ball back into his hands.

She shook her head.

He sighed and thought for a second; he probably should've come better prepared, but whatever. "Okay, come here." She moved to stand next to him, and he stooped down to put the ball between his feet, then used his hands on his waist to guide her into a spot about halfway up from the approximate foul line. He used his feet to gently put hers into proper position.

"Why am I starting so close to the basket?"

He sighed. "Because I said so."

"I'm going to need a better reason than that," she responded, still looking up at the net.

"Well, the closer you start the easier it is." He paused and raised an eyebrow. "Kind of like doin' it."

She clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth and shook her head. "That didn't make any sense."

"Anyway, it's easier to tell exactly what your mistake is if you're standing closer, too." His hands were still on her hips. He squatted down a little bit, his hands pressing on her so she followed him.

God, he was so close. He had some kind of a bizarre force field around him. There was no denying his magnetism to the opposite sex, especially if he heard you doubt it out loud because he would try to actually prove it, and she could feel his pull on her in the less than two inches in between them.

She vaguely remembered the celibacy club meeting she had attended, when Quinn had pressed the balloon between each girl and boy and said if it popped the noise would make the angels cry. Well, this whole situation was completely innocent and the balloon would've popped. He probably would've melted it.

It kind of made _her_ want to cry, but she could never be sure if it was the way her heart sped up as soon as she felt his hands on her or if it was because some of the things that came out of his mouth were often downright painful to hear.

"…so that's how all the power in your shot comes from your legs, really."

She nodded even though she'd only half heard him. He bent down to pick the ball up from between his feet, and then he wrapped his arms around to hold it out to her. As she took it, he slipped his fingers up her arms.

"Now, there's a thing for shooting that might make it easier to remember."

She turned her head to the side. Big mistake—he was _rightthere_. And on her sharp, slightly surprised inhale, she caught the vague smell of him. Even though it was summer and it was hot, the smell wasn't _bad_.

"A _thing_?" She asked doubtfully.

"Yeah. BEEF."

"It's called an acronym. But seriously? I'm vegan and you want me to remember beef?" She fell out of form and turned to look at him.

He didn't look particularly amused. "Well, shit Berry, it's not like I mentioned salami. _Yet._"

She rolled her eyes and stepped back to the stance he'd put her in.

He fought the urge to chuckle. When he actually _had_ said salami, her face had gone from heat-pinked to embarrassed red. She was just so easy to harass. "All right, so BEEF. 'B' is for Balance." They had resumed the slight squat that was a prepared-to-shoot position, just naturally, and he leaned forward so his shoulder pushed against her abruptly. She dug her toes into her flip-flops a little but didn't stumble much. "You've already got that down."

He had moved so close that as she turned her head to say something, their faces were right next to each other. She'd had a much longer retort all worked out, but his nearness caught her off-guard and she only got the one word out.

"Dance."

"Right." His voice was rough, a little lower. He had felt it when she turned her head, and hell if it didn't turn him on just a little. "Well, that was way better than the time I sent Hannah flying at basketball camp."

"Well, it's good to know my balance is better than an eight year old's," she countered. She licked her lips and turned her head back forward before this could get any more ridiculous. She briefly wondered if the heat was getting to her.

He saw her lick her lips. He thought if she did it again, it might kill him (or at least, with as close as they were standing it might make her want to kill him because she would feel something she seemed to find repulsive) so he looked away and quickly made it through Eyes on the rim, Elbow under the ball, and Follow-through.

She proved to be a fairly quick study, and after a few shots at their present distance, and a few more with a couple steps back, they were already up to learning about three-pointers—or as close as he could tell without actual lines on the shitty basketball court.

Her first three-pointer did _not_ go so well and the ball jack-knifed from the back of the rim all the way the hell out onto the lawn. They both kind of watched it in amazement as it caught some major air.

Noah pulled his flat hand to his forehead to shade his eyes as he watched it.

"Well, fuck Berry. The least you could've done is mentioned your repressed rage before you tried to break the basketball hoop."

She gave a little laugh and looked over at him. "I guess I didn't know I had it in me."

He looked over at her, trying to keep his face straight. "The heat must be getting to you. I have a drink in the car. Go grab the ball and I'll meet you back here in a second."

She did not miss that, in addition to the fact that he was obviously sweating and a little flushed from the heat (not that she was faring any better), the tips of his ears turned red at her slightly suggestive comment.

She stood for a rare quiet moment and watched him walking away, thoughtfully. She knew he had been watching her butt the whole time she walked over to the basketball courts in the first place; maybe she should just repay the favor. Maybe he was right—the heat was getting to her.

She watched the red polyester mesh moving around his legs as he walked; there was really no denying that he was well-built. And he probably knew he had a nice butt. She sighed and shook her head, finally turning to trudge toward the faraway spot where the basketball had finally landed in the unruly lawn that had probably been a soccer field once upon a time.

She was headed back, basketball in hand and from the far fence of the property, when she saw Noah passing the basketball courts and stepping onto the grass. She altered her course slightly when she saw him gesture toward the playground equipment. She stopped and raised her hand to shade over her eyes so she could see the spot he was talking about. It was the only spot with any real shade around the schoolyard and she understood what he was getting at so she turned to head that way.

She had taken no more than two steps in the new direction when the sprinklers sputtered to life all around her. She was right in the middle and had actually been standing directly in front of one sprinkler head so she was immediately _soaked_. She had stopped in surprise but then, realizing what had happened, redoubled her efforts and ran for the protective cover of the playground.

By the time they made it to the playground, right around the same time, they were both soaked and laughing, but it was confused laughter.

"Why the _fuck_ are the sprinklers on in the middle of the day if the school is _fucking closed_?" Puck asked. Okay, so maybe Rachel was laughing and Puck was angry. That was kind of a change of pace (at least with regards to the former), but it didn't last for too long. As he looked over at her, though, his anger faded into amusement. She had basically just been involved in a one-woman wet t-shirt contest.

They were settling into the covered section, the highest part of the playground that ended in a large, twisted slide that looked like it had once upon a time been a vibrant orange color. Rachel thought better of pulling her knees up to her chest and stretched her legs out, leaving her thighs and below exposed to the sun. Puck opted to fold up so he was completely in the shade, and then he retrieved a bottle of water that was as wet on the outside as it was on the inside. He took one for himself before he closed the cooler.

Rachel had quickly removed the lid from her bottle and was already draining the last of it, leaning back and tipping her head back all at once.

He gulped hard once, on a mouthful of water that he didn't really care if he swallowed. He wasn't sure she was aware just how on-display she was in her current position.

"Damn, Rach…" he breathed, the once-over (or more like fourth-over, but who in the hell was keeping track?) of his eyes more than obvious.

She was just finishing the drink and looked down as she swallowed. She immediately realized exactly what he was looking at and her posture folded.

"Yeah, why _are_ the sprinklers on?" She demanded breathlessly.

She'd heard from everyone but her Daddy, for her whole life, that she needed to relax a little and occasionally learn how to "go with the flow". She sighed and admitted, only to herself, that now might be a good moment to test that particular advice out. After all, there was nothing she could do about the current situation. And the cold water had felt pretty good against her heated skin.

"Probably just to ruin my life," he commented in a dry voice before he shifted a little bit.

And then she realized exactly what was going on when he was looking. She fought the urge to smile.

She shrugged. "And why would my being all wet ruin your life?"

He gave a sharp, dry exhale. It might've been a laugh. She couldn't be sure.

When he spoke, though, his voice was low and intense. "Do _not_ start something you can't finish."

Hers was lower, softer. "Who says I can't finish it?"

It was something he didn't know he'd been waiting for. All the glances, the casual brushes against each other…fuck, even the "accidental" making out over the summer had all been building toward this. There was a reason it was her comfort, her friendship, he had sought. There was a flipside to all the annoyance and the fact that they bugged each other.

They were under each other's skin, in each other's veins. This was _real_.

And her words turned the key, snapped it into life and sharp, sudden focus.

Before he knew what he was doing, he had flipped over and was laying on top of her. She dropped back, not too fast but caught up in his arms, as his lips landed on hers roughly. She gave as good as she got, her hands sliding under his soaked tank top, peeling the fabric away from his skin just enough that sucked back around her hands, even as his roamed freely over her bare arms.

His knee was balancing him enough that he wasn't entirely crushing her with his weight, but the offset was the hard press of his thigh against her even as she adjusted to grind against it.

"God," he muttered when he felt her damp thighs clench around his own thigh, then her moving against him. He couldn't tell which parts of her were wet because of sprinklers and which were wet because of _him._

She lifted her head up as his fingers found the elastic in her hair. He pulled so hard it snapped and her wet hair spilled out onto the brown plastic and he dipped his fingers into it, tangling the strands around his skin even as he tangled his tongue around hers; her chest shuddered slightly as she rubbed her tongue against his.

Rachel, for her part, was unable to actually do anything that she was consciously aware of deciding to do. Her hands traced over the smooth material of his shorts, feeling the clench of his hamstrings and then up over the hard curve of his firm butt.

He pulled back a little to look at her as his hand slipped over her thigh and under her skirt, finally rubbing his finger over the crotch of her panties. He watched her, and she watched him, and it wasn't entirely unlike the hot gaze she had seen all over him up in her room.

If she were being honest with herself, that was how he had been looking at her all summer long. It was how she _wanted_ him to look at her all summer long.

She dropped her hand to the waist band of his shorts and he absolutely froze. After a moment, he pulled back and looked at her face, but she had no idea what this look was. It was totally different from the look he'd been giving her, and totally different from any other look she'd seen.

Her hands on his shorts made him think. It was kind of foreign territory for him to be on the verge of fucking _and_ thinking at the same time. He knew for a fact she hadn't actually done much with St. James; it was just something he could tell, no matter what she said. Santana liked to tease him that he could pick a virgin out of a police lineup, and there was a little bit of truth to that. He knew, regardless of Finn's slightly drunken admission during a fast and furious video gaming marathon, this was probably the furthest she'd ever gone. And for the first time in his life, that stopped him _cold._

He pulled all the way back, letting her hands drop away from him as he balanced on the edge of the step they had been sitting on.

"We should go," he said simply.

She frowned as she scrambled to sit up. She glanced down, all her clothing still in its proper position, and she looked up at him as she ran her fingers through her tangled, damp hair.

"Why?" She asked slowly.

He cleared his throat and looked down, fully unable to man up properly and admit his sudden realization out loud—at least not all of it. "I can't fucking do this to Finn. You should…you should deal with that mess first."

"_Finn_?" She whispered in disbelief. "This is about _him_? And why are you…"

It hurt that he couldn't just be focused on her. Maybe she was kidding herself and she hadn't seen desire or affection or any sort of genuine caring in that look she had cherished so much. Her heart was pounding as she thought about it, and her stomach turned over. In the same breath, she was not totally prepared to figure out what that meant.

"Why are you thinking about any of that while you're kissing me?" She demanded finally. "Is that what you're thinking about the whole time we're hanging out, too?"

"_No_." He said sharply. He groaned and rubbed a hand over his face. "Fuck, I can't do this, Rachel. I just…I just can't right now." His voice dropped and she heard two words she never thought she would hear him say. "I'm sorry."

She wanted to yell. She wanted to tell him she didn't understand, but the trouble was that none of that was true. She got it. And she was just as afraid of it as he was. This had been…different. As she had previously thought, the whole summer had lead up to this and it was totally unnerving. She needed more time, and clearly he did, too.

"Maybe someday you'll be able to," she said. "You know, get it out of your system."

He finally made eye contact with her. The hell? Was she saying she felt whatever that was, too? Did she want it? _Him_?

He just couldn't do it right now.

"For now, maybe you should just take me home," she said quietly.

They looked at each other for a long, long time as their breathing evened out and they came to a silent understanding.

"Maybe," he finally said. But neither of them knew which of those many maybies they were actually talking about. Not yet. It was just too much, too soon.


	9. Chapter 9: Get It Figured Out

_**A/N: **__I don't know if I need to apologize for it or not, but this part ended up being WAY longer than the others I've written so far—like I think almost double. I hope that's a good thing. This part kind of answers a lot of questions I got and it directly follows the chapter titled "Get It Back" from a bit ago, so you may want to re-read and refresh. All other relevant information will be at the end of the update so I don't ruin anything. Ha! _

_This is getting back toward the reason this story was rated M in the first place, so if you are sensitive to language or smuttiness, please just click that arrow pointing to the left, deal?_

_**Last but not least, thanks for all the reviews, follows, alerts, etc. This story has by far surpassed my expectations with all of that and I love knowing that others love what I'm writing as well. It seems each part gives me ideas for at least two more, so there is really no end in sight here. Also, I can't remember if it was this part or the last one, but I forgot to thank **__**Paceismyhero**__** for unknowingly letting me borrow one of her Puckisms. She makes me a better Puck-writer and I totally owe her!**_

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**Get It Figured Out**

One of the really good things about Winter Break from school was that it was _long_ and you only had to deal with people if you chose to; all the loose ends – the glee club performances for holidays, the class projects, everything like that – had been tied up before school recessed. This year happened be one of the years that because of the calendar and the way dates fell they were out of school for what seemed like eternity.

Rachel was taking full advantage of it after the mess of her birthday party. Her dads had been out of town, leaving only the day before the party and then staying gone for almost two full weeks. She'd feigned illness to avoid joining them once school was out, and she had largely managed to avoid everyone. Now her dads were home, but they had stayed blissfully and suspiciously silent on the subject of Puck's absence and her lack of sociality.

Everyone always said she was a drama queen and she thrived off their attention. She knew she should probably get used to people prying into her personal life at some point if she really was going to seek celebrity status, but this time she just didn't feel like it. Puck had pulled the door open while they were yelling and it had been enough for everyone that was listening to catch the gist of their issues. It wasn't necessary, because it had all played out during the game anyway, right in front of them. At that point, the words were just semantics.

No, for all the things she had allowed to play out about her publicly, she was totally content to sit on this for another week until school started again, and maintain radio silence. The battery on her cell phone had eventually died, and while she had put it on the charger, she hadn't ever actually removed it. Technically she wanted to leave the phone at least turned on in case her dads needed something, but she had ignored everyone else. Finn had sent no less than five or six text messages per day, on top of repeated phone calls. Kurt had been clocking in just behind him, leaving hourly voicemails until sometime that first day when her mailbox was full and she hadn't bothered to empty it. Mercedes had texted but hadn't called. Sam had texted. Tina had called a few times and texted a few, but less than the others. Even Mike had sent her a message this morning.

She was pretty sure Blaine had gotten in a few texts and messages somewhere in there, too, but whenever it was, she had stopped paying attention before that point.

Rachel stopped paying attention because Puck was nowhere on the list of those who had contacted her. She wasn't sure how she felt about that—if she even _wanted_ him to—but no matter how she felt, it hadn't happened anyway. And she sure as hell wasn't going to contact him first. Maybe he was out trying to find a rebound skank anyway. Who cared?

Somewhere deep down, she knew she cared. That was the whole problem. She had turned down Finn and his offer of a relationship (or his declaration of love) nearly two years ago now, and why had she done it? She had done it because she could feel herself, those strong and steely parts that her whole personality was built on, falling away. She could feel herself going soft when she was with him and lost in those big, innocent, brown puppy-dog eyes, and she hated that feeling of slipping into totally vulnerability. She had never really felt like she was losing herself to Noah, exactly. He did the same basic things that Finn did even still—he encouraged her, supported her for the most part, told her when she was being insane or an idiot. But the way he did it made her feel steelier, stronger, and maybe even a little sharper. She didn't feel herself getting soft. It was like the constant opposition actually made her tougher, and she was grateful for that. It was a subtle difference, but it was something she felt would make a huge variance in her future success.

The thing was, though, that the hard shell of an exterior—the tougher skin, if you will—that she had been building up had an offset. It had a soft spot. She still had weaknesses, like everyone else, and the problem was that he knew what they were and then he _used them against her_.

It didn't seem like that should be allowed or easily forgiven.

The real question was just how much he had used them, and if it was intentional. It was entirely possible he had just blurted out the implications of infidelity in the heat of an argument. She had told him once that he was proprietary, that she expected and trusted him to take care of her and to defend her. Well, those concepts didn't exclude the possibility of jealousy and regardless of the innocence of playing a game, she _had _kissed another boy right in front of him. She had enjoyed kissing another boy, and honestly it wasn't the first time during their relationship that it had happened. To her, it was almost like a stage kiss. He had never flared quite so red or so angry with any of those. So what was the difference this time?

This time, he'd come out fighting with every sharp tool he could find. It felt like he had stabbed his words right into that soft underbelly that barely housed all of her insecurity and self-doubt—and it was right after he had kissed Quinn and left Rachel feeling so exposed. Quinn was a big part of all Rachel's insecurities in a way, because Rachel knew she'd never be a girl like Quinn (even if Rachel was loathe to give the Cheerio that much power). It wasn't physically possible—never mind emotionally possible. She would never be blonde or tall(er) and thin. She would never be poised, confident, cool, or proper. She wouldn't ever be popular and she had given up trying or caring what others thought. She couldn't control the fact that she lashed out, that she was sometimes bigger than life, and there was no way in hell she could ever be underhanded. No, Rachel had long ago come to accept the fact that she was obvious, loud, brash, and often condescending. It was nothing compared to the cold composure of Quinn Fabray. Truth be told, she didn't _want_ to be that way anyhow. She just wanted to be herself and be accepted and loved for that girl.

And he had thrown every single bit of that desire right back in her face. He had implied she wasn't enough for him and that he'd been sneaking around. The other half of the problem was she couldn't be entirely sure what was true. Had he been faithful to her? She hadn't heard rumors the contrary, and there was never anything particularly secret about his prior conquests, so she had no reason to expect the entire student body of McKinley High to keep it from her now. But at the same time, he _could_ be an unusually good liar even if he was usually so bold he was brutally honest and totally tactless. Still, she knew the ability to lie was there.

She just couldn't figure out what would've been in it for him to cheat. She'd had opportunity to cheat herself and she could never figure out an actual benefit and had turned down the opportunities immediately. And she had actually told him about those, too. Well, one time he had been there. And of course he always knew what happened between her and Finn, even if they were just friends. That seemed to be his real sore spot, the potential relationship with Finn that she had shelved, and even at this late date in the game Noah wasn't relaxing about it _at all_.

Rachel had been reading – a rare book that wasn't related to the theater in any way that she knew of, or for school—and had totally lost herself in her thoughts. Even as she was thinking, though, she was still reclined on her bed with the book open on her chest. Her dads had invited her to eat popcorn and watch a movie with them (and she pretended to miss their sympathetic 'but-it's-not-a-school-night-and-you're-in-pajamas-at-five glances), but she had declined with an excuse that her book was addicting.

Of course, once you'd read one Jodi Piccoult book, you'd read them all, so that wasn't necessarily true.

Her dad's soft knock on the door, followed by the rich baritone of his voice pulled her gently from her mind-wandering.

"Hi, sweetie."

"Hi, dad," she said giving him a small smile. He came into the room and stopped a little short, looking around confusedly.

"Oh, you really _can't_ hear it," he said simply. He knew they had soundproofed her room about three years ago when her constant practicing resulted in a peace disturbance call placed by a neighbor to the local police department, but he hadn't realized until just this moment how well they did. Or the fact that, as much as it kept her noise _in_, it kept all the other noises _out._ It worked both ways.

She tilted her head and folded the book closed. "Hear what, exactly?"

"Well, your boyfriend seems rather intent on serenading you. And apparently he didn't mention it first."

She smiled and shook her head. "What?"

"Noah has been playing in the driveway for about twenty minutes." He lowered his voice and looked at her, the glance bordering between amused and confused. "The lyrics are saying something about his stupid mouth?"

"Oh, _honestly_," she gasped and rolled her eyes as she shook his head. "There's no way he can think that's going to work."

Leroy Berry smiled at his daughter. He was inordinately proud she didn't back down for anyone who could carry a tune in a bucket. "Well maybe it should. What exactly did he do?"

She had scooted off the bed and moved over to her closed curtains. The large window in her room looked down onto the driveway below and she was trying to peek through the heavy purple fabric without Noah catching her eye.

Once she was standing this close to the window, though, she could actually kind of hear him singing and strumming in time with his guitar. She took comfort in the fact they'd predicted even colder-than-average temperatures for the icy evening. The weather report had actually induced the Lima Arts and Media Executives to cancel the annual First Night celebration because it was supposed to be such bad weather no one was planning on attending anyway. Although New Year's Eve was still two nights away, the cold weather had moved in early. She was torn between hoping he'd at least put on those disgusting gloves without fingertips and hoping he got frostbite.

"That sounds dangerously close to prying, dad," she murmured. What _was_ he singing? It was a guitar interlude at the moment and she wasn't entirely certain of the song yet although it sounded vaguely familiar.

"Not prying," he protested with a bit of a chuckle. "Just…asking."

She sighed and retracted her hand from the curtains. "We got into a fight and he said something that implied he had been unfaithful."

Leroy raised his eyebrows in surprise. Noah had been, to the best of his knowledge, nothing less than committed and respectful to their daughter since they started dating. The implication that it wasn't that way made him strongly consider breaking his ribs—but only in his head because Hiram was enough of a pacifist he would have Leroy sleeping on the couch if the words were spoken. "And was he?"

She swallowed and turned to face him directly, even if the window was perpendicular to the door. "I have no reason to think so, but I guess there's no way of really knowing, is there?"

He crossed the room to kiss her forehead and put a hand on her shoulder. "I've heard a woman always knows."

She smiled even as he kissed her, but her smile faded when she caught his words.

_One more thing, why is it my fault? So maybe I try to hard but it's just because of this desire…_

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Hang on, dad." She pulled her head away and turned toward the window, standing between the curtains and the cold windowpane as she slid the panel open.

"Puckerman!" She yelled. The playing stopped.

"Yeah, babe?"

"Knock it off," she said firmly.

"What?" He asked. Even Leroy could hear the surprise in the younger man's voice.

"This isn't going to work," she said firmly.

"But this is sorta my thing," Puck said. A slow smile slid across his face. "It's sort of our thing, right? I say something stupid, you ignore more, then I sing you a sweet song by a Jew and make it all right."

She shook her head. "Not this time. The thing you said was not just a little stupid, it was totally asinine. I'm ignoring you because I'm still angry and John Mayer is _not_ exactly Jewish. Moreover, that song is completely inappropriate for the situation and not even a little apologetic. You're just going to have to try harder. Now get out of my driveway before you freeze to death. Good night."

With that, Rachel snapped the window closed and then stepped back around the curtain, turning to face her dad again. He was trying really hard to repress his laugh and was failing miserably.

"Well, I suppose that took care of it then." He wrapped her up into a hug and wished her good night before he went to bed, finally able to fall asleep now that the troubadour outside the house had quieted down—for now.

* * *

She woke up and did what had become her normal morning routine in the last couple of weeks – elliptical workout followed by shower, ignoring cell phone, going downstairs for breakfast and house cleaning once her dad's had left for work. Today, though, they would leave work early and head to Columbus for some New Year's Eve celebration one of Daddy's clients had gotten them tickets to attend. They had a hotel room all lined up, and while they invited her to join them, she had declined. Her dads had spent years shuttling her back and forth, arranging airfare and boarding during play performances and to summer camps all over the place—the least she could do is bow out and give them a nice date night every now and then, right? And she wasn't wallowing or still angry. No, not even a little.

All right, truthfully she couldn't even bring herself to put on a show face. She didn't have to for six more days, so she wasn't going to waste the energy on it now for some lame, freezing party in a city two hours away. And she ignored Leroy's rich voice telling Hiram that they didn't need to worry it was a ploy to sneak her boyfriend into the house for the long weekend because she and said boyfriend were on the outs. Maybe she should try to sneak someone else in, just out of spite for all three of them.

Finn was the first person that came to mind, although she was almost sure he would have plans for the holiday anyway. Plus, that was a dangerous game to play and she owed it to both the boys to at least be fair. She had strung Finn along for long enough before she finally turned him down. She wasn't stringing Puck along and she knew the Finn button was the far wrong one to press. She also knew that, because she didn't have many friends, those were really her only options for company tonight. So…alone it was.

As she bustled around the kitchen, clearing the dishwasher following last night's dinner. Her ears automatically picked something up. She stood up straight and listened a little more closely.

It had been two days since Puck's first attempt at an apology. Was he trying again? At ten o'clock in the morning? She wasn't sure his retinas had actually seen this early of an hour since school had let out.

She walked to the front door and looked out the window just beside it. Sure enough, there he was in the driveway and strumming his guitar. She couldn't make out the words he was singing unless she opened the door. She looked down at herself. She'd been padding around the house in her green 'Defy Gravity' t-shirt from Wicked (one she didn't often wear because the neck was so low and the words were printed right over her breasts, so she knew right where eyes would land if anyone saw her) and a pair of black dance shorts that were called 'booty shorts' for a reason. She frowned. It was totally laundry day and she looked super slutty.

It was one of the benefits of planning to be home alone all day. She had a date with the iHome in her dads' room later and she was going to belt some Broadway and dance around the house like that. So what?

She sucked in a deep breath, knowing it would be necessary for warmth because her outfit certainly wasn't going to do it. She pulled the door open and stepped out in bare feet and slutty, home-casual outfit onto the porch.

His eyebrows jumped up as he took her in, her arms folded across her chest.

_I am sorry for the things I've done; don't try to let you down.__In my dreams at night I hear your voice, and I'm shaken by the sound.__Now I'm stranded in Los Angeles and you're all I think about.__So if you love me, won't you please forgive me now?_

She kept her arms folded tightly against her, drawing warmth from the closed posture even as goosebumps formed on her legs. It was still so cold outside that she wished it would just snow already because it always warmed up a little bit when it snowed. This bitter cold was almost unbearable.

Well, at least this song had an apology in it. But she was pretty sure the first thing she'd heard was something about drinking whiskey, and as the song progressed it was still sad but somehow less apologetic. She frowned and shook her head as he started into the last verse.

_You are somewhere far away from me; I'm here all by myself.__Through the space between the two of us, wish I had something else.__'Cause I'd surrender up most anything if I thought it'd help somehow.__So if you love me, won't you please forgive me now?__If you love me, won't you please forgive me now?_

He let the note fade out after he'd finished singing and he started toward her. She held out a hand—palm toward him to halt his forward motion—when he was on the bottom porch step.

"No," she added flatly.

He frowned. "This one actually said I'm sorry."

She tried not to smile, but it was actually easy to repress. "…and that right there tells me you still don't get it."

"Get what, babe? That I'm an idiot and I said something really, really bad when I was drunk? Oh, I got it. I'm trying to make up for it."

"Why?" She folded her arms back together across her chest.

They almost never actually said the words she was looking for. They relied on everything else to say it for them. There was always a song or an action for it, but they rarely had to talk things out. He wasn't entirely prepared to do that just yet.

"Rach…"

She shook her head and dropped her eyes away from his face. She swallowed hard, trying to keep her voice steady. "It hurts. You can't just…you can't just make that go away. It's going to take more than this."

He dropped back down a step and just watched her go back inside.

It was certainly not the first time he'd acted like a total asshole and he knew it. But it was the first time he thought she might break up with him for it. He had actually been kind of worried when Finn had called him; he and Finn were barely friends these days, mostly only linked by the demanding, yakky brunette, and Finn had called to call him a douchebag and ask what he'd said. When Finn had called him two days ago, he reported that he hadn't been able to get a hold of Rachel and neither had anyone else—for like two and a half weeks. It wasn't a huge surprise that she wouldn't talk to the rest of them, but the fact that she had pulled away from Finn, too, meant she was more than mad. It meant she was hurting and she was like his sister's stupid cat—retreating to lick her wounds. It was such a weird response for her, pulling away instead of giving the world those fuck-you eyes she was so good at, that it made him more than worried.

He had stayed away at first because he was mad, too. Just where in the hell did she get off kissing another guy like that, right in front of him? She hadn't denied it when he accused her of wanting to date Blaine, either. He'd always been buttsore about her close friendship with Finn—especially knowing the fucker was totally ass-backwards in love with her to this day—but it seemed different somehow. There wasn't a girl in history who had chosen him, first of all; even the ones that had been with him for any length of time (which until Rachel was about a week total) certainly didn't give him a second glance when they had more than _one_ other option.

He had just wanted her to be different. He barely admitted it to himself, let alone admitting it to her, but she was his favorite part of the day—of life, really. She irritated him, challenged him, and loved him better than anyone. She gave him everything he needed, and even though his stupid fucking mouth had run away with him—again—there wasn't anyone else he even wanted to be with. Yeah, it had surprised him too. But apparently he had to find some other way to tell her that, and he had a feeling he'd better do it pretty soon.

* * *

Rachel's phone had been ringing for the last thirty minutes straight—literally. She had a mental image of Finn with two cell phones in his hand at all times: his and Kurt's. She could imagine him cycling through them in an alternating manner, calling first from his and then using Kurt's to dial as the ringing switched to the notification of her full voicemail. He would then press Kurt's phone to his ear and let it make the connection and ring through while he one-handed his phone to dial again. Lather, rinse, and repeat. At least, that was the only reason she could come up with why her ringtone was alternating in perfect intervals between 'Defying Gravity' and 'Don't Stop Believin'".

She had just finished making another cup of tea and was getting ready to settle in on the couch downstairs with a blanket, a big bowl of caramel popcorn, and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. She was _so_ going to that in person next year. One day she hoped she'd be a performer at it. But for now, she was content to nurse her aching heart and alternate between that and the Rent DVD in the comfort of her own home.

She decided to take pity on Finn once her phone started in on its seventh alternating chorus of Don't Stop.

"Hello?" She finally said, balancing the phone awkwardly between her ear and shoulder as she walked down the stairs with the oversized mug of tea in one hand and the popcorn bowl balanced on her hip.

"He-hello?" He stammered in surprise. "Seriously, Rachel?"

"It's me," she said simply. She was downstairs and bent to put the bowl on the small end table next to the couch. "You called thousands of times?"

"Yeah!" He said. "Are you—what are you doing? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she said simply.

"You're not talking enough for me to believe that." She heard a muffled sound and then him saying 'here' to someone. She assumed he was tossing Kurt's cell phone back to him.

"I'm really fine," she said simply. "I just don't have anything to talk about."

"Well, talk to me about your plans for tonight. You should be coming out with your friends."

She raised her eyebrows and dipped back onto the couch before she reached for the chenille throw blanket to pull it over her bare lap. She hadn't bothered changing her clothes after her Broadway sing-along and she was starting to regret it. It was quite cool in the basement, even if outside had warmed up slightly when it started snowing around dinner time. "I'm playing games with my dads," she lied easily.

And he knew her too well for that. "Your dads who stopped by Burt's for a tune-up today before their 'long drive to Columbus'?"

She sighed. Was it really asking too much that they drive up to Van Wert for auto service so she could maintain a shred of dignity? At least the guy there who did that stuff was Jewish.

"Yeah," she said lamely.

"C'mon…" he said, trying to make his voice persuasive. "Please? We're going to a party. Dalton kids, Blaine's friends… different people than normal. It'll be fun."

"No, thank you." She said simply. "I appreciate the invitation."

"Rach…"

"Finn…" she echoed in protest.

"You know, even if you guys broke up, you still have friends. There are still people who care about you and you're kind of pissing us off when you don't answer your phone."

She sighed. "I don't want to talk about this."

"What happened?" He asked. He dropped his voice but she could still hear the interest. "Did you break up?"

"I said I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay, then I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

"No," she said simply. "Just…what…what has he been doing during the break?"

She could almost hear the shrug. "Dunno. I guess the same as you? No one's really talked to him either. I finally called him a couple days ago because we were wondering if you two had finally killed each other."

"Who's 'we'?" She asked. Not all that long ago, it had come to light that way back when she was dating Jesse, as much as she had lied when she said she and Jesse had sex, he had also lied when he said he and Santana _hadn't_. And although she hadn't seen much proof of a flirtation or anything else between them, she wondered. And it had caused her to wonder what that would've been like if she'd actually started dating Finn after his love-based declaration.

No, all things considered, even with the fight they were currently having and all of her doubts, she was pretty glad she'd chosen Noah. In the end, it seemed like it had been the best thing for her.

Either way, she wasn't surprised when Finn uttered Santana's name.

"So, she didn't even wait for the body to get cold, huh?"

"Rach, I hate to break it to you, but if he hasn't slept with her or Brittany, he hasn't been sleeping with anyone else, either."

"Why would you think I was worried about that?" She asked in a low voice. She hadn't told anyone about his words or her doubts…not even _him._

"I was already coming up the stairs," he said simply. "I heard what he said. I didn't hear the entire fight, but I heard that part and then there was no more talking."

She sighed. "I still don't want to talk about this. And I don't want to go out tonight. But thank you for the invitation."

"Okay, well…can we hang out sometime this weekend? Your dad mentioned to Burt they would be gone until Saturday."

"Let's wait until school starts," she said quietly. "I'll talk to you on Monday."

He was quiet for a long time, but the disappointment in his voice was unmistakable. "Okay, Monday it is then. Bye."

"Bye," she echoed. This time she just turned her phone all the way off. She knew her dads wouldn't be calling tonight and she didn't care if anyone else did.

She lasted through about ten minutes of the Dick Clark special before she was utterly bored and flipped the television over to her movie before she settled with her head on the arm of the couch, deeply wrapped up in two heavy blankets.

It happened to be a quiet part of the movie and she was pretty sure she could hear a guitar from the front of the house…again. She rolled her eyes, reaching up through blankets with the remote to pause the movie before she stood immediately. Her movement up the stairs drowned out his words, so the sound was intermittent, but it was immediately clear this was way different than the other times. First off all, she knew it was snowing so he was probably immediately soaking wet and frozen.

_It's so hard to say that I'm sorry__  
__I'll make everything alright, __a__ll these things that I've done__  
__Now what have I become__and where'd I go wrong?_

_I don't mean to hurt __j__ust to put you first__  
__I won't tell you lies__  
__I will stand accused with my hand on my heart__  
__I'm just trying to say..__  
_

She hit the tiled foyer before she realized he was right on the front porch this time instead of in the driveway. And his voice was different, thicker somehow like he was crying. She could see him through the beveled glass on the front door, the porch light and him mixing to make dancing shadows on the tan tile in the entry way. He choked out the next two words and she was certain this was different than the other times. She was certain because the raw emotion in his voice and the fury of his pounding on the strings, like somehow that motion was the only thing holding him together, brought tears to her eyes.

_I'm sorry_

_It's all that I can say__  
__You mean so much__ a__nd I'd fix all that I've done__  
__If I could start again__I'd throw it all away__  
__To the shadows of regrets__and you would have the best of me_

There was a little guitar part and even through the closed door, she could pick up the nuanced volume increase. She saw him drop his head down to look at his hand as he took a step back while he played. She walked quickly while he was looking away and she pulled the door open a crack. He saw her and dropped his volume a little bit, but if possible his intensity increased. She inhaled sharply and watched him.

_I know that I can't take back all of the mistakes__ b__ut I will try__  
__Although it's not easy, I know you believe me__'cause I would not lie__  
__Don't believe their lies__, t__old through jealous eyes__  
__They don't understand__  
__I won't break your heart__  
__I won't bring you down__  
__But I will have to say__  
_

_I'm sorry__  
_

His head came up on the critical words and she couldn't think of anything she'd ever seen that was so overwhelming. His entire focus on was on her and there was a note of begging mixed in with everything else. He sounded almost desperate, everything just increasing even more as he repeated the last part again and again.

There was no way her eyes could leave his face. His cheeks were pink and his head was covered almost completely with a layer of fluffy snow that was in various degrees of melted.

"You look like a snowman," she commented as she blinked and her tears spilled over. He reached out, close enough to touch her, and used his thumb to wipe the salty track off her face.

"You look like an angel."

She had repressed her gasp. "Your hands are freezing, Noah."

"So is the rest of me," he said simply.

She swallowed hard and stepped, opening the door the rest of the way as she did. He came inside and set his guitar against the wall before he started peeling off his coat and wet shoes. She closed the door and then stepped into the kitchen to get a soft towel she could use to wipe the melted snowflakes from his guitar. She bent to start doing that without a word as he stooped down to unlace his boots before he toed them off his feet.

He had been well-trained by her and her dads, and if there was anyone more anal about housekeeping procedure than the Berry family, it was his mother. He placed his boots right next to the heating vent in the entryway and hung his coat from the high row of hooks. She finished wiping down the guitar and then draped the towel over his boots before she turned to take his hand in hers. Her other hand gripped the blanket wrapped around her closely as she led him down to the den. He sat down right against the arm of the couch in what had been designated over time as 'his' spot and she sat down next to him, facing him with the blankets still wrapped around her and a foot dangling over the side.

"So you're sorry," she prompted after a stare-off.

"Rach…" his eyes slipped closed on the plea in his voice.

"Are you drunk?"

"M'be a little," he mumbled.

"And explain to me how that's more productive than the last time I saw you," she demanded before she pulled the blankets around her a little tighter. "Don't we do things we regret when we're drunk?"

He let out a long sigh. "But it's easier for me to get these kinds of words out."

"You can't apologize unless you're drunk?" She asked doubtfully.

"Not those words. Those suck, but _this_ is harder for me to get out," he started. "I love you so much. I…I was waiting for you to call because I knew you were mad and you always call me when you're ready to talk. But you never did and I was afraid I lost you."

His eyes fell closed and his voice broke.

"I mean, I know I'm a fuck-up, but somehow you fix it. I feel like I can do something, like I can _be_ something with you. And without you…well, without you let's face it: I just drink a lot and fuck random women and that's not a life."

"And how much of that have you done since we got together?" She asked, her voice small. "I'm sure you've had offers, I just…" she shrugged as she trailed off.

He let out a breath and looked at her, straight up. "Well, it depends on when you think of us getting together."

She arched an eyebrow. "For argument's sake, let's say the first time we did it."

He nodded and looked down at his lap. "Well, there were a couple of times after that Santana stuck her tongue down my throat. She tried it again after she blew the lid off the fact she fucked Finn."

That had only been a few months ago. She felt tears in her eyes. "_Oh_," she said sadly. Her hand came up to cover her mouth.

"I didn't kiss her back that much. Just for a second before my head caught up," he said in a low voice. "At least, that last time. There were a couple of times we made out a little bit before that party when you found the texts from her, but it was never more than making out."

"I think for Santana that making out and blow jobs are about the same thing, so…did you do that, too?"

"No," he said honestly, looking over at her with wide eyes. "But after that time at the park when we were playing basketball?" She nodded to indicate she knew when he was talking about. "Well, I guess I technically cheated on you because I knew how I felt and…well… for a couple weeks after that there were _a lot _of women."

She swallowed hard. She had felt whatever she felt the first time then, too. Saying it freaked her out had been an understatement. "That time at the park was a little overwhelming."

"I _know," _he agreed. "It scared the shit out of me. I think I tried to fuck you out of my system and well…when that didn't work, I tried fucking _you_ to get you out of my system but by then I was already so far gone that it didn't really work the way I thought it was going to."

She didn't look at him at first. He wasn't sure how she would react to that particular bit of truth.

Instead, she seemed to understand this was the most honest conversation she was probably going to get. She could get him, in this moment, to admit things he didn't usually have the balls to say and things she usually didn't have the directness to ask.

"So how _did_ it work?"

He sighed and looked over at her, unable to maintain eye contact while he said the words. Before he spoke, he looked straight forward again. "Instead of getting it out of my system, it's like I can't get enough of you. It's _still _that way. There isn't enough being with you for me, but being with you is enough for me. Does that make any sense?"

She just nodded, feeling those tears in her eyes all over again.

"I'm probably not enough for you," he said simply. "Hell, I know I'm not _good_ enough for you. You're gonna…you have a life already even without me in it. But you're the only thing I've ever loved that really loved me back and…I just…" he struggled. He finally turned to look at her and let out a deep breath.

She moved over into his lap, reaching her arms around him and circling him in blankets. "I think we're beyond 'enough' at this point though, aren't we? You're the one I want. The _only_ one I want. Kissing Blaine was no different than kissing some guy in a play."

"Yeah, well, for the record I still want to rip their faces off," he said easily. His voice was a little more familiar now, too. "And that guy from Barefoot in the Park?"

She smiled, knowing exactly who he was talking about. "The guy who was a little hands-y?"

He nodded. "Yeah, he just about got four fucking flat tires and his windshield almost got introduced to a crowbar."

She pulled back enough to laugh. "Do I even want to know why he didn't?"

Noah shrugged. "Well, I don't know for sure that he _didn't_. You'd have to ask Finn. Finn hated that guy, too. I was too busy trying to get you the hell away from him at that after-party."

Her laugh erupted and as she tipped her head back, he slid his cool hands over her bare legs and around her hips to brush against the low-rise waistband of her shorts.

"You said it was the dress," she protested lightly. The costuming for the play had put her in a vintage, 1960s mini dress that hung about three inches above her knees, and had an empire waist under her breasts that, he said made them 'stand out'. Plus, he argued the pale yellow lace was layered for movement but he claimed it kept him staring and hoping for a peek of a sliver of skin. By the time he was done with her, she'd felt absolutely beautiful in the dress and had begged her dads to buy it from the costume designer; they had and it was now sitting upstairs in her closet, just waiting for the spring formal. (But he didn't know that yet.)

He growled and nipped at her neck. "That dress was fucking awesome," he admitted. "Getting you away from the douchebag with no boundaries was even better."

She ticked her fingers along the back of his neck and as she shifted to straddle his lap, he dropped his head to the bottom of the v-neck in her t-shirt.

"That dress had nothing on this shit here," he said simply. His tongue darted out of his mouth and he licked at the crease in her cleavage.

She sighed and leaned forward, rubbing against him as she felt his erection come to life. She dropped her butt a little bit to grind against him and he rolled his hips up against her core, the thin satin-like material of the shorts no match for the warmth of her pressing against him. And it didn't really give her a barrier, either. She rocked back and forth eagerly, the pent-up missing of two weeks without him finally slamming into her in the instant he tangled his fingers into her hair.

"Fuck, I've missed you," he breathed, his warm breath dancing over her skin. "Please tell me your dads have some wicked fucking plans that mean they're on the other side of the world." He kissed up her bare neck as she dropped down against him, leading each kiss with his tongue before he soothed the spot with his lips and kept moving up. His hands rubbed along the smooth material of her shorts as she continued to absolutely grind against him and her hands rubbed at his neck muscles in some sort of erotic massage.

"If Columbus is the other side of the world, then yes. They're gone 'til Saturday."

"Praise Jesus," he said simply.

Her stomach rumbled with laughter. "Don't tell me—Finn converted you."

"No, I think you're the only one who's made me see God," he said, the words leaving his mouth as his tongue landed on her earlobe and she shuddered against him.

"The only one?"

His eyes came open and he sat back to look at her. He didn't know she was still so insecure; it had been a long time since she asked for that kind of reassurance. He felt like even more of a dick for his words.

"The only one," he confirmed, his eyes searching hers for the realization that he was only speaking the truth now. "Baby, you _are_ the best I've ever had and if you…if you don't believe that, then I'm just going to have to prove it," he said simply, punctuating it with a shrug to make it seem like casual fact. He swallowed hard. "Good thing I have all night, because there's something I owe you."

"You owe me?" She asked in surprise.

"Well… I'm not sure I can totally pay you back. I had all kinds of plans for your birthday that got screwed up by my stupid mouth. But they were the kind of plans that expire."

Her hands were on his face as she looked at him. "I'm sorry."

"You bet your sweet ass you are," he said. He gave her a kiss that refused to die, and as she slipped her tongue into his mouth, his breathing increased and his arms wrapped around her to pull her closer. She was surprised when he turned and, the length of his body still tight against her, laid her down on the couch.

Once she was laid back and the blankets had fallen away from her, he smoothed his hands over the length of her body and fuck if her legs didn't last forever. How did she do that? She was so tiny but her legs seemed like they went all the way up to her chin. Especially in those fucking shorts.

He took his time, his hands working on her feet in a massage (he had learned the hard way—like maybe by being kicked in mouth on accident—that she didn't like her feet being kissed). Once his hands hit the sculpted muscle of her calves, he dropped his mouth to first one shin, placing sloppy kisses all the way up her leg. He took extra care with his tongue, tracing intricate patterns on her inner thigh right at the high hemline of her shorts. Her head had dropped back and she was breathing only in open mouthed pants as he kissed over her shorts, already feeling how wet the material was, and then he continued in an arch back down all the way to the other foot, pulling back before he lifted her leg to press it gently against his chest as he rubbed her right foot. Her eyes came open to watch him. He placed his flat palms at her knees and dragged them all the way up with a slow, insistent touch to hook his fingers in the waist band of her shorts at her hips. She lifted her ass up off the couch to help him remove them and shit—she wasn't wearing underwear under those teeny-tiny shorts. It was the same outfit she'd been wearing all day (he knew that from having been here earlier) and so that meant she'd been going commando _all day_.

He was an idiot. She'd been home alone, not wearing underwear, in the t-shirt that made her breasts look like fucking dessert and he had waited until it was arctic white-out conditions before he apologized.

Well, this was his chance to make it up to her—and himself—and he wasn't going to blow it. Well…wait, was it the same nickname when it was a girl?

After he had casually tossed her shorts away (glad again they were home alone so they didn't have to leave their clothes in an 'easy access' sort of spot), he hooked his finger into the collar of his shirt and pulled it away from his head. He wanted to feel her bare skin against his shoulders, wanted her calves massaging his back as his tongue tasted her for the first time in weeks.

He repeated his previous, slow path that meandered up her legs. By the time he licked the crease of her thigh and she let out that high-pitched moan, he was afraid _he_ wasn't going to last long if he made her come too fast. The noises she made and the way her thighs grasped him when she came at the mercy of his tongue…well, it usually took every ounce of his concentration to last through that under the best of circumstances. Not having done anything physical with her for two weeks, with guilt and heartbreak his totally unsexy jacking-off companions, was _not_ the best of circumstances. He was going to be lucky to last thirty seconds as it was.

But judging by heat coming off her, she wasn't going to last much longer than that.

He wanted to keep her talking; when she was so turned on (she was starting to shake a little underneath him), her voice was so low and sexy it made him rock hard. Plus, he liked it when she could be involved verbally. There was something about it—something so hot in dirty talk with her. It was like her confidence multiplied and she did stuff she probably hadn't ever even though of before—and she always thanked him later.

"What do you want me to do?" He grumbled, letting his lips wander over her sex, his breath dancing through the folds (she claimed she kept herself groomed because of dance uniforms) as he let his lips brush against her but kept his tongue away.

She was breathing so hard she squeaked with every breath she let out. He didn't sit up at all; her legs were hooked over his shoulders already and her calves were pressing into his back. But his eyes wandered and she was looking down at him with a hot, half-lidded stare. She licked her lips before she spoke and his hips rolled forward, the friction against his dick making his abdominal muscles contract.

They had played this game a hundred times before. She knew to ask for _exactly _what she wanted because he would do what she said.

"I want your tongue everywhere," she said. Her eyes closed as he reached his fingers up to part her folds a lit bit and then he blew cool air over the hot, wet flesh. Her head rolled to the side. "Make me come with your tongue. Put your fingers inside me so I can come against something hard."

As soon as she was done, he leaned his head forward to press his tongue right to her clit like she had told him. It was the one time in his life he actually wanted to follow directions. He lapped at the spot, his motions too short to give her what she was looking for and he felt her thighs tighten against him. His fingers had been holding her open for easier access and he lifted one hand to hold that spot so he could drop the other down and press one finger into her. He drifted his tongue over her, barely touching her skin and hardly tasting her before he eased a second finger in. He curled his fingers just a little bit, settling on the pulsing, spongy spot he found there, rubbing circles even as he dropped his tongue down to make matching circles against her clit.

She tried to move against him, her heels digging into his back and her thighs grasping at him tightly, but his expert touch was practiced enough that he heard her suck in one breath and hold it. Her muscles contracted against his fingers once, then twice, and then as they let go with no rhyme or reason, she started swearing and panting his name in one long, incoherent sentence that was probably the hottest fucking thing he'd ever heard.

She was no more than barely through the orgasm, her breathing still totally not under control, when she reached down to grab his hand and pulled him up to her. She knew him well enough at this point to know he would be right on the edge after he went down on her, and it was that knowledge that guided her as she tugged insistently at his hand and he moved. With one deft roll of her hips, he was inside her.

"_Rachel_," he gasped out in surprise. Even though they had done this for a long, long time, they had always approached birth control with the attitude that more was best. She was on the pill and they used condoms fairly religiously. It was the first time he'd ever gone bareback, the first time in a really, really long time he'd done that with anyone else, and she was just too warm and wet for him to even attempt holding back.

With the aftershocks of her orgasm still trailing through her and gripping at him in all that tight perfection, he came and it slammed into him almost violently as he wrapped his arms around her and held on tight, the tingling of her fingertips dragging along his spine just adding even more to the whole thing.

They laid there, him still partially hard and inside her, for a very long time. They heard some of the neighborhood kids with pots and pans and whatever else and Rachel started to laugh a little bit.

He looked down at her amusedly, the expression on his face demanding explanation.

"I'm kind of wishing I could think of a reason to pick another fight," she said simply. "But fighting at midnight on New Year's just seems like a really bad idea."

"Please at least let me get laid a couple more times," he begged (not entirely teasing, either) before she started wiggling underneath him. And fuck if it wasn't enough to make him get hard all over again.

"Well, you know, they say that whatever you're doing at midnight is what you'll spend most of the next year doing. Who am I to argue?"

He snorted as his hips started moving in time with hers. "_Who are you to argue_? Did I hear you right?"

"Maybe I should sing it for you. Y'know, since that's our _thing_," she teased lightly.

He suddenly grew serious and gave her a soft kiss. "Fuck yeah, it's our thing."

"I guess you did get it after all," she said, her voice so soft he barely heard her over the middle school rejects outside.

"Hey, I catch on eventually," he agreed. He kissed her again and had to admit, it felt good to be back on the inside. And he didn't even necessarily mean that in a dirty way for once.

* * *

_Songs used (in order of appearance): __**My Stupid Mouth**__ by __**John Mayer**__, __**Stranded in Los Angeles**__ by __**Ron Pope**__, and __**Best of Me **__by__** Sum41**__. Also, I totally stole the "only thing I've ever loved that really loved me back" line that Puck speaks from the song __**Give You Up **__by__** Ron Pope. **__In case you can't tell, I'm on a Ron Pope kick lately. YouTube him and/or The District if you aren't familiar because they are awesome._

_John Mayer is Jewish on his dad's side. The quote from him says something about him identifying with the Jewish faith, but it's not confirmed anywhere that he either does or does not practice it. Ron Pope and Sum41 are not Jewish, so I've totally broken Puck's Jewish artist streak. I'm not that apologetic about it, actually. I'm pretty sure Queen isn't Jewish, either, so I maintain Ryan Murphy did it first._

_Oh! And sorry for the snide remark about Jodi Piccoult books if you are someone who likes them. My current opinion was formed after I read my third or fourth of hers and absolutely hated it. It's like Nicholas Sparks: they have a tried-and-true formula to their stories, and if you happen to like their formula, more power to you and I'm not trying to be insulting._


	10. Chapter 10: Get It In Writing

_**A/N:**__ So this part came out quickly and I'm hoping it's all in-character and that you enjoy it. It's set during regionals of their junior year so at this point they've been together for like seven months or so. I obviously cut out the song Rachel wrote for Finn because there is no way I could make it work for Puck. And this addresses some other things I think might be gaps in the show and were big questions I had. The songs in it are barely mentioned so I'm not going to mention them again here, and really I listened to __**All to Myself **__by __**Marianas Trench **__while I was writing. Not that it particularly fits this part either but it's a good song anyway. _

_Thanks for all the love with this story- please keep it coming. You are the best and it's been a lot of fun to write this one. A reminder that it's rated M for two reasons: Puck's mouth and… his actions. As always, this part spawned ideas for a couple more so I'm not sure there's an end in sight. Oh, and I was fairly lazy with proofreading so I apologize in advance for any typos. Read what I mean, not what I wrote. Ha._

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* * *

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**Get It In Writing**

Rachel sighed as she flipped through the garment bags one more time. One of them was missing and she couldn't figure out which one. She looked down at the clipboard clutched in her hand again, counting the names on their list. Between Kurt's departure and Matt's moving when his parents split, they had been forced to acquire another member to even compete. Puck had talked a girl from the fight club (which he couldn't participate in anymore due to being on probation from the _incident_ as they simply referred to it and thank God) into joining and she still didn't want to know how. She also didn't want to particularly deal with Lauren and her caustic personality, but at least they had twelve members.

_Rachel, Quinn, Tina, Santana, Brittany, Mercedes, Lauren. _ Why did they only have six dress bags?

Finn had gone with Mr. Schuester to hand out the boys' ties and the registration forms to confirm their spot in the competition. The had technically been registered as soon as they won at sectionals, but an ink signature was required on the form, so turning it in was really just a housekeeping sort of matter. Still, she knew they wouldn't be any help to her because the boys were so useless that even handing out ties was enough to keep them occupied.

Santana approached slowly. "What's the problem there mid—Rachel?"

That was another thing. Rachel let out a deep breath and looked over at her. It may not have been one-hundred percent fair or justified, but Rachel had absolutely unleashed on Santana during sectionals. It had been nearly three months and the two of them still rarely spoke. And usually only when there were witnesses around. Noah had backed up everything Rachel said and although she knew they were still sort of friends, being on the outs with Noah in anyway was not a comfortable place for Santana. Rachel _almost_ felt bad for interfering in their friendship. She would've felt worse if it hadn't been a direct reaction to Santana's constant interference in Rachel and Noah's relationship. She couldn't deny it was nice to have that little bit of tension gone.

"I'm missing a dress and I can't figure out which one."

"Do you have mine? Me and Britt are ready to get dressed."

Rachel just nodded before she leaned forward. Of course the garment bags containing both of theirs were in the middle of the pile. It was a delicate combination of kneeling so the whole pile didn't slide, yanking hard enough to get the bags out from under her knees, and trying not to fall over. She managed, but felt less than graceful. Santana kind of snorted her amusement at the struggle, but didn't offer to help and didn't say anything. She reached out to accept the two garment bags and then turned on her heel and walked away.

Rachel sighed. "Santana, wait!" She said simply. Santana stopped as Rachel gestured to the shoe boxes stacked neatly next to the chair. "Don't forget your guys' shoes." Santana simply nodded and retrieved the top two boxes then walked away.

Rachel redirected her attention to the list and crossed off Brittany and Santana's names. She narrowed her eyes as she looked over the list again.

"Rach?" Finn said, his voice hesitant and soft.

She was distracted by her imperfect inventory and just gave him a cursory glance before she looked back down at the clipboard with a frown. "Yes?"

"Here," he said, holding his bent arm up.

She all but gasped when she saw a dress bag draped over his arm. "Thank you! Why do you have that?"

"The ties were all in with one of the dresses," he started. He grinned, a little sheepishly. "Your dress was the smallest so they were in with yours. Sorry."

She shook her head and smiled. "I've been going insane trying to figure out _who's_ dress I was missing and now you're telling me it was my own?"

He laughed. " 'Fraid so."

She reached out to pull the bag off his arm and as she slid it away from the black shirtsleeve, she noticed his tie draped around his neck. "Do you need some help with that?"

"Yeah," he admitted. "You do it the best."

"Of course I do," she said. "I was coached by two fathers who wear ties daily."

He shook his head. "Have you ever heard of a word called 'modesty'? It was on my study list. I could've sworn you were the one who wrote that list."

She looked at him with a smile and shook her head as she tugged on the ends of his tie to drag him over to where a low bench was situated against the wall. She turned her head to watch what she was doing as she stepped up on the bench to boost herself up so she would be able to reach all the way to his neck. It actually made her eye-level with him so she lowered her voice. "Well, I look at it like Santa Claus. I've heard of it, but I think of it as a nice fantasy that doesn't really have a place in my world."

He chuckled a little under his breath but tried to hold still as she began the familiar motion of tying his tie, like she had for every single competition or performance they'd done where a tie was required.

Rachel felt Noah's approach more than she saw him. Finn noticed her tense up. It was kind of a running theme when Puck was around lately, so it was safe to say Finn felt his presence, too. As soon as she had looped the tie together, he stepped away. He could take it from there and saw no reason to make the tension between the three of them any worse. "Thanks. I'll just go see how everyone else is doing," he said. She nodded her response. "Schue has the paperwork stuff to bring you but I think he got distracted with something about seating so he might be another minute." She just nodded and looked at the watch on her wrist. They still had about 20 minutes before they had to be in their seats. Her makeup was already done, her hair needed very little work, and now that the mystery of the missing dress was done, she felt like she'd be fine—but she still had the girls' dresses. She hoped they could be ready expediently as well.

"Hi," she said softly to Noah. Her well-placed smile faltered a little bit as she took in the urgency all over his face. He grabbed her arm and tugged a little bit. She stepped down and looked at him with confusion and a little bit of concern. "Are you angry that I was…" she gestured vaguely in the direction Finn had walked.

"No, I know he's an idiot that can't tie his own tie. I'm surprised he can handle tying his own shoes half the time," he said in a rush. He thought about what he said and…well, sure, Finn wasn't a total idiot all the time and maybe Finn could help him out before he talked to Rachel. He put his hand on her shoulder. "You know, actually, you still need to go get dressed. Do that first and then I'll come find you."

She scowled her confusion as he pulled her close to kiss her cheek. "God, you smell incredible," he mumbled.

She was still standing there and still totally confused as he jogged off in the same direction Finn had gone.

He caught sight of Finn slipping into the closing door of the boys' dressing area. Noah slipped a hand inside, just barely before it was closed too far. Finn would be way better equipped to handle what he'd just seen than Rachel would be. Maybe.

"Finnegan," he said sharply as he went into the room. Exactly what he didn't want to happen did, as everyone in the room turned to look at him. "A word." He yanked his head back to the door. Finn looked around, wondering if maybe Puck was going to go off half-cocked on him about Rachel again. It was kind of a theme, especially for some reason since Santana and Rachel had gotten into it.

"What?" He said as soon as they were back out in the hall. Puck looked down the hall to where Rachel had been standing and was glad she was gone. He really didn't fucking want to tell her any of this, but kind of felt like he should. He just didn't want it to be _so_.

"It kills me to say this, but I need your help with something Rachel-related."

"No, man. You're on your own there," Finn said simply. His hands were on his hips, but he shrugged anyway. "I can't…"

"Look, the problem is not Rachel, exactly. The problem is who I just saw here. In fact, we probably need to warn Quinn about this, too. Maybe I should grab Sam."

"There's really only one thing that would screw up both of them," Finn said in one of his brief flashes of catching on quick. His eyes widened. "Holy shit, is Miss Corcoran here?" He looked around.

"Yeah," Puck whispered, moving closer to talk a little lower. "But even _worse_ is that she brought St. James with her."

If it were possible for Finn's eyes to pop anymore, they did. "We're screwed, dude." He turned and kind of kicked at the wall. "_Fuck!"_

"Yeah, thanks," Puck said dryly. "That helps."

"Did they see you, too?"

"No. I saw them walking in from the parking lot and I hightailed it out of the lobby," he said. He was pacing back and forth now, he and Finn sharing the same basic tense posture.

It had not been long enough since they both got in (serious) trouble for protecting Rachel for this to happen.

Puck rubbed a hand over his Mohawk and thought. "Do we tell Schue?"

Finn nodded. "That's a good idea. Maybe he can talk to Ms. Corcoran and at least have her sit somewhere up in the balcony where Rachel won't see her."

Puck nodded, too. "Either way, I better go get this shit over with. I think Rachel's suspicious since I didn't blow a gasket when she tied your tie."

"Yeah, I…" Finn trailed off. He didn't want to admit he'd been kind of expecting the same thing.

"Look, you guys are friends and I have to deal with that," Noah said on a shrug. "If she was _untying_ your tie, I would've pounded you both into the ground."

"Fair enough," Finn said. He shook his head and rolled his eyes. "It really sucks that they're here."

Puck just nodded again as they bumped fists and parted ways with their understanding of what they had to do. It was basically emergency notification at this point and he wondered if he could come up with enough of a distraction for Rachel. She had kept her cool when Finn burst out with his fucking three words last year, but this was totally different. When it came to her mom, and even a little when it came to Jesse, it was all tied together and she hadn't really dealt with any of it. It was definitely her weak spot. And as much as he was concerned with blowing the competition by dropping this on their female lead (who had _written_ the fucking anthem they were singing, by the way and it was fucking awesome so she deserved to be proud and he was proud of her) within spitting distance of going on stage, he was more concerned by the harm that would be done to her, to Rachel herself. There was no way to make this go down easy—the most limited fallout he could think of is if Rachel knew they were here but never had to see them. God, why in the hell did he have to see them? Why couldn't he have just continued on, focused only in distracting her in another…way.

Hmm. Maybe that would be a good distraction in this case, too. He had to at least consider it. And then maybe he could just get her really, really drunk _after _the competition when they were celebrating their win. The plan was not without flaws, but it would be a good starting point.

He knocked lightly at the girls' door and Rachel came out of the dressing room several minutes later. Kurt had helped them with their costumes, even though it meant a lot of back and forth for him since his transfer to Dalton. He said it was the least he could do for the group that had so staunchly tried to defend him. And while Puck had been watching Rachel and hoping she was okay after everything that had happened, he knew that she'd had a big hand in the costumes because she and Kurt had really helped each other deal with stupid fucking Karofsky—well, his actions at least.

Anyway, with her input into the costumes he kind of wondered what they would end up like. She had a certain style, and while he had found redeeming qualities in it for sure just because he loved her, he had kind of wondered what she and Kurt would come up with when they put their heads together.

Now, looking at her, he had to admit they had done a really good job. She looked fantastic, even if she was struggling with the silky black swath of ribbon wrapped around her waist. All the fighting she'd done and those stupid bitches couldn't even be bothered to help her get dressed. He shook his head looking at her.

"Turn around a sec, babe," he said softly.

"Um, really? You're going to help me tie my dress closed?" She asked doubtfully.

"Well…I figured you'd cuff me if I tried to get you out of it." He said easily, bending his knees a little bit so he could see what he was doing even as the smooth fabric snagged on his guitar-string roughened fingers. He felt retarded for cracking the joke about Hudson not being able to tie anything earlier.

"Well, you just have to pick the appropriate moment, Noah," she said, her voice laced with exasperation and amusement all at the same time.

"Yeah," he said with a sigh. She had no fucking idea how much truth she was speaking to him in that one second. He tugged on the two loops he had formed. That was as close to equal as he was going to get them. She sensed he was done and turned around to look at him.

Her voice was low and sweet. "There's something you don't want to tell me."

Goddamn her…he shook his head. How in the hell did she do that?

"Yeah," he said simply. He tugged her closer to him with his hands on her waist.

"Well…is it something you did? Because I think that might be able to wait and…"

"I wish," he said. He reached a hand up to toy at her hair. "There's someone here I know you don't want to see."

"Okay…" she said simply. "Like what? All of Vocal Adrenaline?"

He flashed a quick smile and shook his head.

"More like two former members. Or a former member and their former director." He mumbled. He still had a hand on her waist and he felt her suck in a breath.

"How do you know this?"

"I saw them," he admitted.

"Do they have…they..is…"

"Beth isn't with them."

She shook her head. "So I get that Shelby is here, but who's the other one?"

He closed his eyes. She was going to make him fucking say it. He had his fingers tangled in her hair and his head was tilted toward her as he mumbled the name. "Jesse St. James."

Noah knew as soon as she spoke she hadn't actually dealt with anything that fucker had done to her. "Why would he be here?" Her voice was thin and nervous.

"I don't know, I just saw them walking in together. I didn't stick around and chat with them."

She nodded and dropped her head. "Yeah, chatting with your fists wouldn't be good at the competition."

"You know me too well," he admitted. "I just didn't want you to…to be singing and then see them."

"You know me too well," she echoed. She brought her hands up to his shoulders. "Well, there is nothing we can do about this. And we need to get to our seats." She raised her eyes up and they searched his. "So let's go."

"Keep your head up," he said simply. He reached up to take one of her hands in his. "I won't let go, okay?" He leaned forward and kissed her forehead even as she nodded. Finn and Schue had just come out of the boys' dressing room and were approaching.

"You okay, Rach?" Finn said simply. He could see how tightly her hand was wound into Puck's and he felt a small stab of jealousy mixed with relief. He was glad Puck was there for her, even if he wished he could be the one there for her _like that_.

She sniffled a little bit even though she had cried so little the tears never left her eyes. "Yeah," she said simply. "The show must go on, right?"

Mr. Schuester smiled at her and nodded. "Right."

"Then let's go out there," she agreed. Schue squeezed her shoulder and Noah clutched her hand and the foursome walked out to the designated meeting place just outside the auditorium doors before they went in as a group to claim their seats.

* * *

Finn's height was a real advantage sometimes and it was never more so than when he was trying to find someone or something. He bobbed on his toes over the heads of the people backstage, looking for one figure dressed completely in black. Because at a show choir competition, _that_ wasn't damn near impossible to find.

"Puck!" he hissed out into the crowd. He'd seen two or three options for the guy but there were just so many people.

"What?" Puck asked. He had finally pried his hand out of Rachel's long enough she could go off and sing her duet ballad thingy with Finn and it had pained him to do so. She had clutched his hand so tightly as they watched the other groups perform that he thought his fingers might fucking fall right off. He thought maybe he understood how Santana called her man-hands. It wasn't the size, it was the brute force of her grip.

"Rachel's freaking out and I…I can't make her calm down." Finn sighed. "I think she's had about a gallon of water to drink and at this point I'm just hoping she doesn't, like, pee her pants while she's on stage."

Puck's eyes widened. The group performing before them was only about a third of the way through their first song, which bought him probably somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes before they would be done.

"All right," Puck said. He recognized it for what it was—calling in a pinch hitter. It took a lot for Finn to admit, especially to him of all people, that he couldn't get through to Rachel. "Where is she?"

"I told her you would meet her just outside."

Puck just nodded and turned around to go find her. She was pacing just outside the door to the stage and muttering to herself with her hands in her hair.

"Rachel?" He asked slowly. She didn't seem to notice him. "Hey, Berry!" he said more sharply and her head jerked up.

"Noah, what if they think I'm terrible? What if the song I wrote isn't good enough and they laugh at me and…"

He pulled her close to him, took her hands in his and tucked them behind her back, and in the most effective shutting-up mechanism he'd found yet, walked her to the brick wall so he could push her up against it with a forceful kiss.

He finally pulled away with a small smirk. "Now what were you so worried about?"

She swallowed hard. "Jesse and Shelby and…" she sighed. Her body was a little more relaxed, but not totally. He nodded and kissed her again, this time pulling his hands away from hers so he could take her jaw into his hands even as his hips rolled forward against her out of habit. She brought her hands up to his wrists and rubbed down to his elbows and he groaned into her mouth as she pulled her tongue away from his and then sucked on his bottom lip until she let her teeth graze the sensitive flesh. He loved kissing her—and it might've been the first time he couldn't say that about a girl, really.

He pulled away abruptly. "Remind me again what you're so worked up about?" He said, his voice breathy and almost panting the words.

She dragged her eyes open lazily. "Jesse…Shelby…"

"Fuck," he said simply. He was hoping he could kiss her stupid but she was too damn smart—or neurotic—for that. He wasn't sure which or what combination. He let his eyes drift around the small hallway until he found a recessed corner that led to some stairs. It was a back entrance for the catwalks above the stage no one was using. He hoped to high hell it would be a private enough corner. He tugged her with him as he walked over there and was secretly glad he'd done that stupid band concert in Fort Wayne way back when so he knew the way around the auditorium well enough to find the quiet spot in the sheer madness of sixteen show choirs performing.

"Wh-what are you doing?" She asked breathlessly. "I ca-can't miss my cue," she stammered. He pressed against her eagerly, almost grinding her into the wall as she lifted her legs up to wrap around his waist.

"I'll get you there," he promised. The double meaning wasn't lost on her, either. She knew exactly what he was doing. The thin capri dance pants under her dress were hardly a barrier, even thinner than cotton underwear, and she ground against the hard bulge in his pants eagerly as he dropped his head down and licked her neck. It was _that_ spot and she sighed as her hands traced over the shortest hair on the side of his head.

He dropped one hand away from where he was rubbing his thumb in slow, forceful circles over her dress, to press it tightly to her core. She gasped out and dropped her head back against the wall with a thud. "Oh, God…_Noah_…"

He moved his head so he could breathe into her ear. They may have been somewhat separated from the group for a minute but there was no need to take chances. "I want to fuck you," he growled. "To love you until you can't stand up but I can't do that right now, can I?"

"No," she said, the word a short, breathy cry as he pressed his fingers more insistently against the seam of her pants.

"God," he muttered as she rolled her hips against his hand. It all pressed against his fully-charged erection. It never failed to amaze him how little foreplay was actually required between them. Like they always had a low level of lighter fluid and it just took one match. "God, I love you. I _love you_."

"Mmm…" she said, rolling her head away from him. "Mmm…I love you, too."

"I don't want you to worry about anything. You're going to do so good up there…fuck…you're amazing," he said. He had managed to wiggle his fingers up to the smooth waistband on the pants. There was just enough stretch in them for him to slip his hand inside and once again (as always) she wasn't wearing underwear with her dancing attire.

The feel of his hard finger against her wet center nearly made her come undone right there. He could hear her heartbeat pounding against her chest in time with her raspy breathing and he pressed a kiss to her lips to quiet her sounds, eventually slipping his tongue against hers as she opened her mouth.

He retreated from the fiery kiss just enough to speak, but his lips were still brushing against hers. "I wish I could be inside you while you come," he said simply. Her hips were rolling against his hand frantically and her eyes were closed so tightly. Her breathing was fast and silent. "I love having my dick inside you while you scream my name, or feeling you all over my fingers," he said passionately, barely able to get the words out. "I love watching your face when you let go. Let go for me baby," he begged. She smacked her head against the wall as her mouth opened against his and he swallowed the breathy moan of his name that escaped from her. He loved that, even when he wasn't buried inside her, he knew she was having an orgasm just by her breathing and her voice.

They could hear the roar of applause from the auditorium, a lot more clearly than the vague and muffled noises that had come from the room previously while they were otherwise engaged.

He was so fucking hard it wasn't funny. But there was no time at the present to fix that. He stepped back barely enough that she could slide her legs down his and place her feet on the ground. He withdrew his hand from her pants and pulled the waistband up where it belonged. Her eyes came open and she looked at him intently.

"Now what were you so worried about?" He asked, his smile threatening.

She smiled back at him. "Huh? Nothing. I wasn't worried in the slightest. We're fully prepared for this competition." She slipped her hand into his. "Let's go kick some ass."

He rolled his eyes just a little bit. _She _would be fine. _He _would have to dance around a raging hard-on because he knew hearing her sing would just make that fucker even worse. He took a deep breath and followed quickly behind her. It might've been torture and all, but he sure as hell wasn't going to miss it. "Let's go," he said simply.

He turned his head to the side and saw someone at the end of the hallway and he was pretty sure he knew who it was. He tugged on her hand lightly to stop her.

"Hey," he said, stepping closer to her. He knew she was in a hurry and he could see Finn's head peeking over the people moving around backstage, no doubt looking for her. "I love you. Break a leg." (At least _he_ got those two in the right order.)

"Where are you going?" She asked in a thin voice.

"Quick bathroom trip. I won't miss more than a few seconds," he bartered. He gave her a quick kiss and then slapped her ass. "Go get 'em."

She smiled and ran away; it had been by design because he knew she didn't have time to protest.

He stepped back out into the hallway and let the door close, and sure enough. The douchebag was going to…what? Look for her backstage to wish her good luck? Not so much.

Puck tucked his hands in his pockets and walked quickly toward the approaching figure.

"Well, well, well," Puck said tightly.

"Was that you sneaking out of a clandestine corner with Rachel Berry?" Jesse asked, his voice dripping with interest and…something else.

"Why the fuck would I tell you anything about that?" Puck snorted. "What are you doing here?"

"I wasn't aware it would be suspicious for me to attend a public gathering where many of my friends are performing. I just happened to be in town."

Puck nodded. "I never said it was suspicious. But your _friends_ aren't back here. That's what I meant when I asked what you were doing here."

The two had strolled to a stop, a mere fifteen feet away from the door that lead to Rachel and Finn on stage and starting to belt out Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough.

If Noah Puckerman had his way, the other shithead wouldn't get any further.

"I tried to apologize."

"Yeah, I know." He said simply. "Like you thought that was possible. It was actually kind of funny."

Jesse raised an eyebrow. "What would you know about it?"

"Again, why the fuck would I tell you anything about that?"

Jesse nodded. "So the off-limits subject is Rachel…and whatever relationship the two of you share."

Noah nodded simply. "You had it at 'Rachel'."

"So you're her protector then?" Jesse asked. He cocked his head to the side. "When last I checked, she could decide who she wanted to speak to for herself. And the Rachel Berry I knew wouldn't have tolerated anyone doing the dirty work for her."

"Well, she isn't the Rachel Berry you knew, because you knew her before all the screwed up shit you and Shelby Corcoran pulled."

Jesse's face faltered a little bit. "I..I.." he cleared his throat. "It wasn't like that."

"Okay, well regardless of how it _was_, I'll tell you how it _is_, jackass. You wanna talk to her? You have to go through me first. And it'll be over my dead fucking body."

Jesse's jaw set, so did Puck's, and they stared each other down hard for a long moment.

"Well…I guess you'd better get in there so your team can actually compete. Break a leg, _Noah_."

"That has two totally fucking different meanings to us," Puck said, his voice low and full of steel. "Don't approach me again." He turned on his heel and walked quickly to the stage where he could hear the fading notes of the first song. They were all supposed to run out on the stage to start their mash-up of "Sometime Around Midnight" and "Who Can It Be Now?" that would feed almost directly into the pop anthem Rachel had written. He needed to be out there because he was the soloist for the first song. As he jogged out, Finn caught his eye and even though their friendship was slipping (understatement of the fucking century), Puck was pretty sure he knew that Jesse St. James had been dealt with.

* * *

"What do you mean 'we're missing someone'?" Schue asked. Puck was looking around and out the window, trying desperately to catch a glimpse of his girlfriend anywhere and he kind of wanted to smack their beloved director right in the face.

"Rachel isn't here yet," Finn said, his voice tinged with 'duh'. "How could you not notice that?"

"I thought she was getting a ride with her dads," Schue added simply, in his own defense.

"No," Puck said. He breathed out a frustrated sigh. "I'll go see if I can find her."

"Don't you think maybe a girl should do that?" Mercedes asked.

"Let's just send Finn," Santana said simply. _That _started a squabbling match that made Puck roll his eyes as he bounded off the bus and back into the auditorium. Rachel had been trying to get changed _and_ gather up whatever random crap was left behind in the dressing rooms. He and Finn had already been back and forth no less than a half-dozen times carting stuff out to the bus for her. But he'd thought she was just taking a private moment to change once everything else was finished, so he'd gotten on the bus. (It was hardly worth mentioning the bus from sectionals _had_ left them when Schue assumed they had forgotten to clear a private ride home and they got…distracted. Sue him for being a little anxious not to miss the bus and spend the next hour on the phone trying to find a ride home from fucking Fort Wayne, Indiana.)

He found her, still in her blue-green dress, sitting on the upholstered bench outside the dressing room, the same one she had stood on a few hours earlier to tie Finn's tie. She was staring at her phone but he wasn't sure she was seeing it.

Noah lowered himself down to her carefully and tried to speak softly so at the very least he didn't scare her. "Rach? We're all waiting on the bus for you."

She swallowed and looked over at him. She blinked a couple of times and it was like the fog lifted. "Oh! I'm so sorry, Noah. I…I…"

"What's going on?" He asked. He reached a hand out to rest on her knee.

"Nothing," she evaded.

"Can I see your phone?" He asked the question slowly, hesitantly, like he was dealing with that skittish horse from his uncle's farm the summer he was seven. He held his hand out but she shook her head and snapped it closed.

"Later," she said simply. "Let me change. I'll be quick."

Before he could protest and point out he'd heard _that_ before, she had slipped back into the dressing room. This time though, she was true to her word, and she came out in jeans and his football sweatshirt. She smiled up at him hesitantly as she watched it dawn on him that he'd been looking for that thing for like two fucking months and she'd had it the entire time.

"Looks better on you anyway," he said reaching out to take the garment bag from her arm. He slung it over his shoulder with two fingers hooked in the wire hanger in the top and then took the purple duffle bag she'd had slung over her shoulder (that for the record felt like it was loaded down with some kind of ammunition—the thing weighed almost as much as her). He kicked his free arm around her shoulders as she tucked into his side in a well-practiced routine. "Why so casual? I mean… you're coming out of a school-related event in normal clothes."

She looked over at him with a smirk but she couldn't help an honest admission. "I don't know what possessed me to bring these clothes for the ride home," she started. "But I wanted to feel close to you."

He looked down at her, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other even as he stared. "But _I'm_ here."

"I can't explain it," she said. She bit her lip and Goddamn it, that got him every time. "I guess it's just part of the crazy you're used to by now."

"You got _that_ right," he admitted as they hit the double glass doors that lead to the outside, the parking lot, and the bus.

She smiled up at him, but he missed it because he saw Jesse St. James off in the distance, staring at him with a smirk on his face (as far as he could tell anyway… his eyesight was all right, but even Puck could admit his perspective was way off).

Once they were settled and the bus had started to move, she wordlessly handed him her cell phone, produced from the pocket of her red hoodie.

He knew how to bypass her security screen and flipped the phone open. He flicked a glance over to her but she was just sitting next to him and quietly watching for a reaction of some sort. He wasn't stupid, he knew what she was doing. Whatever it was, she hadn't wanted him to see it until he was powerless to pound whoever had been fucking with her into the ground.

He clicked into her text inbox and the top message was from a number that hadn't been programmed into her phone with an 818 area code. He frowned. Where the hell was _that_ from?

_Never figured you were the type to go whoring around in corners with Puck. Guess I was wrong about a lot of things. You're just a stupid little bitch who wasn't worth it. You still aren't. _

Noah tried really hard to keep his expression neutral. "I'm going to _kill_ that motherfucker," he ground out. He looked up, wondered if he could find a way to get them to stop the bus.

She reached out a hand and put it on his thigh. "Please leave it alone," she begged. There was a desperate note to her voice. "After the other incident…just…leave it alone."

He sighed and looked at her again. Her face was so worried and she already had tears in her eyes. Plus the bus was already moving.

He was basically powerless to help how she felt when that fucker texted her. So he just deleted the message and handed her phone back to her. Then he pulled out his own and decided something quietly (for once) and only to himself.

If getting it in writing was what made it true—like if that's what she believed because it was the last thing she'd seen in writing about herself—then he would just have to make sure whatever was on top in the texting inbox was actually _true._

He shot off a quick message that was labeled to all the members of the glee club, including Kurt and Matt requesting that they send her something nice. It may or may not have also included a vague threat.

The second one he sent was just for her. _I can't believe we did that right before a performance. You're fucking hot._

He hit send and let his eyes slide over to her for just a minute as he sensed the movement when she reached for her phone again. Then another message, a more important one occurred to him. _And I love you. A lot._

She laughed out loud and pressed her hand to her mouth as she saw the first message from him, but looked over at him with something good shining in her eyes instead of the poison from that asshole as her phone dinged again with an incoming message.

In fact, it didn't stop buzzing with incoming messages until they were almost home and she'd fallen asleep on his chest. He knew _he_ felt a lot better about things and he hoped she did, too.

He sure as fuck wasn't going to wake her up and ask.


	11. Chapter 11: Get It Outta the House

_**A/N: **__So… sorry for the delay in updates. I've been sidetracked. That does not mean I'm done. And this is still my story with the most hits/reviews/alerts/favorites so I will keep returning to it. I have bunches of ideas and just not quite enough time to get them all down on paper. This one is a little shorter, about half the length of the others—and no smut. Sorry guys. Next time, I promise. All is explained within, though._

_**Lizzie (Paceismyhero)**__, this is one hundred percent your fault. I hope it lives up to your vision and entertains you. __**TjCrowfoot-**__ thank you for the Skype handholding and the betaing and the awesomeness. I can't tell you how much I enjoy our chatting._

_**Disclaimer: **__See the other many of these I have typed._

* * *

**Get It Outta the House**

"I'm boooooored," Puck said, tossing himself back on Rachel's bed unceremoniously. "Can we _please_ find something to do?"

She looked over at him with a smirk on her face but didn't speak. She'd been forced into having surgery to remove her tonsils as soon as the Nationals competition was over. The fact that they had come in third had only served to up the drama leading up to her surgery, but with the ensuing mandatory silent period she had actually calmed considerably.

He had never, _ever_ stopped to think about just how unnerving it could be when she was actually quiet. It had left him with too much time to think. The last seven days had been long and boring. She was shuffling through audition videos she had filmed prior to her surgery, trying to decide what to attach to college applications.

"Are you hungry?" He asked. This earned a shake of the head. She had barely eaten enough to keep anything alive and he was totally bugged by it but when he'd said something about it all he'd earned was a fucking scowl. "C'mon. You need to eat something."

"I had applesauce for breakfast," she rasped out. Her voice was progressing and was just above a whisper, but her face still kind of twisted a little bit if she tried to talk any louder. She kept pointing to the spot in the packet her doctor had given her that said she would start to feel better after a week to ten days, and then using her fingers to point out it was day seven and he should just back off because she was in the home stretch. Backing off was not one of his strengths, though, and he forged ahead even as she scowled this time.

"That's not _breakfast_," he protested. "That's barely a snack for, like, five year olds. Even Becca won't eat that crap unless there's something else with it." He shook his head. "All right, find some shoes. I have a plan."

"I'm busy," she protested. No matter how fired up the look on her face was, the lack of punch in the words didn't convince him and he chuckled.

"You're not too busy for me," he said sharply. He hoisted himself up off her bed and moved to her closet as he tossed the next words out over his shoulder. "Besides, if you don't get me out of the house right now, bad things are going to happen." He emerged with her favorite flip-flops and tossed them at her feet. She scowled as he smirked. "You guys have a fire extinguisher?"

She rolled her eyes as she wiggled her toes and moved her feet into the sandals. "Noah…" she sighed as she stood up.

"You still sound like crap, B. Are you sure you're feeling okay?" His voice dropped to a more tender tone as he pulled her next to him and brushed her bangs out of the way so he could kiss her forehead.

"I _feel_ fine. My throat just hurts," she said, her voice giving out and dropping down to a whisper. He didn't miss the way she'd leaned into the embrace and he _really_ didn't miss the way she was clinging to his shirt. But by God, her dads were home and they were sticklers for the open door rule. They had been home more than normal following her surgery, never allowing Noah to have an 'alone' shift making sure she was cared for. It was almost cute how they hovered, but he could tell she was getting tired of it.

"Just wish we'd had more fun getting it there."

Her face didn't agree.

He released her and they went downstairs, walking quickly. Once they rounded the bottom of the stairs to go through the kitchen and out the door, they were met with two blinking glances of surprise. "I'm making her eat something. We'll be back in a while," Noah said. He didn't stop as he offered the words and he was still latched onto her hand and kept them moving quickly. She had barely enough time to shrug at her dads as he pulled her out the door.

Once they were settled with some smoothies on a blanket at the park, he tossed a notepad her way. He knew it would be a surprise that he kept the legal pad and pen in his car, but…he was just full of weird shit like that. Besides, it had been his invoicing system for the pool business and he just hadn't moved it.

"We're gonna play a little game," he said as she looked at him with questions in her eyes. She raised the Styrofoam cup up to her mouth and wrapped her lips around the straw. He had to actually look away before he continued. "You ever heard of Fuck/Marry/Kill?"

She shook her head without removing the straw from her mouth. He could tell by her shoulders that the cold from the drink was making her feel way better and he thought maybe she would doze off if they relaxed long enough. The three humidifiers in her room had _helped_ but he knew by the texts received at random times of the night that she still wasn't sleeping great.

"All right, well, what we do is I give you three names. And you tell me,out of those three, who you would _fuck_, who you would _marry, _and who you would _kill_."

He could see the retort building up when her eyes narrowed and he knew proposing this game while she couldn't talk had been in his best interest. Really, he liked it as a drinking game because it could be so randomly hilarious, and was always so easy to tell girls he would _marry them_ because then he would get to_ fuck them_, but whatever—he didn't roll like that anymore.

"So first one…" he leaned back on his hands, knowing the way his triceps hardened when he did that was like eye candy for her, and closed his eyes a bit as he thought about it. He chuckled. "All right, I got it. Schue, Sandy Ryerson, or Principal Figgins."

Her eyes widened in total horror and she finally put the cup down. She shook her head slowly and then the look on her face asked him if she _really_ had to answer. He tilted his head and choked back his laughter. "I'll make it worth your while. Later, like when you feel better and we're doing that again."

She rolled her eyes and picked up the pen and paper. She leaned forward as she scribbled something on it, letting her hair slide forward to provide some privacy. She tossed the pad back over to him and he picked it up, kind of curious what her answer would be. Honestly, he hadn't given her many choices and it had been on purpose. The purpose being his entertainment.

His jaw dropped in horror when he saw what she had written. F- (he knew she would never write the word out)- S_R._ _M-PF. K-MS._

He looked back up to her and saw her watching him with a neutral expression. So _that's_ how this was going to go, eh? Interesting. He snorted and shook his head. He wasn't sure _anyone_ could actually fuck Sandy Ryerson because he was so tightly wound that.. just… nevermind. He visibly shuddered and her carefully cultivated expression turned into a smile.

"I'm telling Schue about this," was the only retort he could offer. She shook her head and reached out for the notepad back. This was going to be interesting. She took her time, alternating between sipping and scribbling for a few minutes before she tossed the notepad back.

And ruined his fucking life.

_Kurt Hummel; Jacob Ben-Israel; Finn Hudson_

She was the first one to bring Finn into it. He was kind of surprised. Things were still awkward, even after nine months of he and Rachel being together and Rachel fighting every step of the way to maintain her friendship with Finn. Finn didn't understand what Puck and Rachel were doing together (fuck, not that Puck understood it half the time either, but he was actually pretty happy with the way things were going so far) and Rachel didn't understand why Finn and Puck couldn't just go back to being friends. All told, Finn was a sensitive issue for them and probably always would be.

He figured the way he could "let" Rachel hang out with Hudson would probably be considered growth or some shit. He hadn't been given the choice, exactly, or he would've told her where to stick that thought. She liked to tell him she thought he was turning into a _progressive male_ and a _supportive, trusting boyfriend_. Whatever the fuck that meant.

He tapped the pen on the paper before he went with just writing his choice under each name. He was going to burn this shit when they got home. In the end, he rather uncreatively went in the exact order she'd written them. Fuck Kurt, Marry Jacob, and Kill Finn.

She looked up at him with a scowl.

"What? You want me to defend myself?" He asked. She nodded. He sighed. "Fine. Fucking Kurt would be the closest option to fucking you since, you know gay and guy aside, you two are the same goddamn person. Second, if I married Jacob my mom would get off my fucking case about marrying a Jew. And you don't have to fuck the person you marry. I guess. And I would Kill Finn because…I don't know. Like on a video game or something and because after the other two, it was the only option left."

She smiled and shook her head, but at least her smile reached her eyes. He was going to put this game in the win column. And also the "stays just between us" column. He secretly fucking _loved_ that column.

Truth be told, though, he didn't want the conversation to be all that serious because he just didn't do serious most of the time. This was just supposed to be a fun summer afternoon, chilling with his girl. He had to turn it around. But now that she had given him three guys, he wasn't going to make it _easy_ on her.

She had tucked her hands over the paper and was watching him, waiting for him. "So… how 'bout Barbra Streisand, Patty LuPone, and Idina Menzel?"

She looked vaguely amused as he rattled off the last one. He kind of wanted to just hack his own balls off and hand them to her, considering that's _exactly_ what he'd just done. He'd admitted that he paid attention when she talked about this shit and he knew who her favorites were. More importantly, and he sure as shit wasn't telling her this, he had debated whether to add Bernadette Peters. (Yes, he knew who that was too. Kill him. Maybe he should add himself to the list of options and hope for murder.)

Rachel wrote quickly and threw the paper at him before she picked up her drink. He had been drinking while she wrote and barely moved the cup out of the way to take a look. He really should've thought it through because he choked a little bit on the image of…

F – Patty M—Barbra K—Idina.

Like, seriously. Patty LuPone may have been a little older, but she wasn't bad looking. In fact, Rachel didn't look a lot unlike her and if there was one thing he'd never had a problem with, it was older women.

And now he was having fantasies about his sexy girlfriend and….and a Broadway star? Like, a fucking nightclub lounge act? Not having sex while Rachel was recovering was seriously fucking with him and he needed to play a game of crank the shank. _Again_.

Shut up. Totally not fair to take a guy in his sexual prime, give him hot sex on the regular and then fucking _take it away but make him rub up against the same hot girl anyway_. Let's just say he had some plans for the Fourth of July weekend, okay?

He had to get this into safer territory.

"Wha'dya have against Idina Menzel?"

He tossed the pad back to her as he asked, but she spoke. And it made him want to cry a little bit because, even though he could tell by the volume her throat wasn't hurting as badly, it still sounded painful.

"Shelby looks way too much like her," she scraped out.

He frowned but his tone was appreciative at least. "Hey, that sounded almost halfway like you!"

She smiled widely and bent her head down over the paper. He tried to ignore the stabbing in his chest that always came with her sudden mentions of Shelby. Neither of them had really, really talked about the related subjects of Shelby or Beth outside of that one day last summer. He wasn't sure they ever would but it was okay, because he knew neither of them wanted to. Rachel was just always better at shrugging it off than he was—but not because it hurt any less.

It was hard to feel anything once he saw the names she had written. Totally unfair table turning. While she got to suggest hot girl-on-girl, he got _Neil Diamond, Billy Joel, David Lee Roth_.

Wait—she knew who David Lee Roth was? Maybe she listened to him sometimes, too. Maybe he'd only given her one nut so far.

He scribbled the letters beneath the names again, not paying attention to what he wrote other than he didn't want to kill Neil Diamond. That was just beyond wrong. It broke the small amount of moral code he would admit to. As he wrote the letters though, he looked back up at her and he didn't want to be unserious any more. Just for a second.

Last summer had done a major number on him. He knew it was the same for her. She had chosen him over Finn, had tried to close the door on Shelby and tried to deal with all the bullshit Jesse put her through. She'd had a busy summer then. He'd been trying to get over giving up his _daughter_ for fuck's sake.

And through it all, Rachel was the _only_ person who had made him feel any better about life. Now she was down for the count in some ways, and he knew that even she played it off like her thoughts hadn't lingered on Shelby, he was sure they had. As much as he needed her reassurance when he thought about Beth and Quinn and all that bullshit, he knew she needed his, too.

So he wrote the words carefully, not wanting to say them out loud.

_Noah Finn Puck_

He threw the notepad back to her and then lay down on the blanket. Rachel had told him once that it was like he had a split personality. She admired Noah, but she could barely tolerate Puck. She never called him by the shortened version of his last name. He knew he'd taken a chance scrawling Hudson's name in there, but it wasn't like she could _yell_ at him at the present. So maybe this was his only chance to just make dead sure that she was okay with the choices she'd made last summer when she was all messed up.

He heard her moving, her skin rubbing against the blanket, and then she lay down next to him with her head on his chest. She put the notepad in the hand opposite where she was laying and then just snuggled in. He let his fingertips trace her bare shoulder and just enjoyed the quiet moment for a second before he lifted the notebook and squinted to see what was written on the yellow paper, brightened by sunlight and hard to see.

Underneath Finn's name she had written _fuck._ Like, the whole word. He frowned and tried not to get mad. But it was a really hard thing and it's not like he was actually capable of noble effort.

His eyes dashed off to the side, just left of Finn's name. Underneath _Noah_, it said _Marry_.

He had never, ever thought about his future in concrete terms like that. He'd been so angry when Quinn told him she didn't want to raise a baby with him. He'd been angry for a long time watching her write him off as a Lima loser, a bad parent, and the kind of guy who would knock her up and then leave her high and dry. Quinn had sold him short, sold herself short, and sold _them_ short. She hadn't considered him the marrying kind.

Now that he'd seen it dismissed in writing, even with the stupidity of the game, he felt the exact opposite. Rachel would _marry_ him. Rachel took this that seriously. Of course she did—she took everything seriously. But knowing that leaked over to him was actually a pretty badass sort of feeling. It was almost as strong as all the other crap that he felt that let him know he would be totally happy marrying her, too. If life worked out, he knew they could be like this forever and it would be fanfuckingtastic. It would be everything.

Underneath Puck was written _kill_. He fought the chuckle—he'd seen that one coming.

She felt his chest shaking with the laugh he was trying to hide and she turned her head to look up at him. "What's so funny?"

He smiled widely and let the notebook fall, along with his hand, back down to his side. "I guess I shoulda figured, B. I mean… you hate when I'm an asshole and you've already fucked Puck anyway…"

Even the sudden loss of air when she smacked him—hard—in the hard won abs… well, it was better than the stabbing feeling. And not nearly as good as the thought that he might be able to marry a Jew without falling back on her previous suggestion.


	12. Chapter 12: Get It Fired Up

**A/N**: Thanks to Lizzie (**Paceismyhero**) for the pool party prompt that I turned into housesitting. Hope this cures your badly busy work/life. Or you know, distracts you for a second. The song that inspired it was the super dirty **1000 Julys** by **Third Eye Blind** that even Stephan Jenkins himself could only say was about "doing naughty things". Thanks to Laura (**tjcrowfoot**) for the justification it took to put off household chores and get the majority of this written out. **Thanks to everyone who still loves this story and hasn't forgotten about it and is returning to read more. **

* * *

**Get It Fired Up**

So when he said he had major plans for the Fourth of July (which so happened to be the weekend she felt about a thousand times better than she had in _forever_), he had no idea it would fall into his lap in quite the way it did. He wasn't being literal or anything, it had just sort of happened.

He was also not going to complain, and he thought it might be some kind of a record. Then again, he'd never really had so little to complain about, either. It was hard to complain about housesitting for one of his former pool customers (an no, she wasn't one of the ones he'd fucked…she was one of the few he actually, y'know _liked_), in a house that could only be described as fucking paradise, and having his super-hot girlfriend…well…

Rachel was currently in his lap, bobbing up and down in time with the rock music playing throughout the house—on the thing that was like an iHome on an intercom and he'd managed to avoid telling Rachel is was because Mrs. Finkhauser _loved_ to pipe in showtunes—and it was _not_ the first time in the last two days they'd been in exactly this position. The best thing about it all was that they'd been completely honest with both sets of parents (her idea, definitely _not_ his) and they had still _let them come_.

More than once.

Again, not that he was complaining—or really even _telling_. The only person that really needed to know all about it was, well, doing it to him.

"God, baby…" he muttered, his lips tracing along her throat where she'd tossed her head back as he hit that spot inside her that made her whine. It was deep enough he had to press his hips all the way against her and she had to be sitting _just_ _so_ over him and in a chair. But they'd figured that out once and the only time it had been _better_ was in the office chair in her room because it bounced.

For all the things (counters, doorways, huge showers, a swimming pool, _a hot tub)_ he wanted to take advantage of in the house, it seemed like maybe the only thing missing was her desk chair. Everything else he could ever need was here.

"What? I missed you, Noah," she gasped out. She dropped her head to smile at him, their faces even as she kept moving against him. He reached a hand up and brushed a sweaty clump of hair from her forehead.

"I was there _all the time_."

"Mmm," she murmured. "I _know_ you were." Her hair danced around his shoulders as they ground frantically against each other and he barely had time to question how she could be sweating and just _so hot_ in a house with central air. Then again, he did it to her, so again he wasn't complaining. He had to really focus to hear her next, breathless words, though. "But it wasn't like _this _and this is how I say thank you."

He grinned as she grinned, too. "I really, really fucking love the way you show your appreciation." His voice dropped down to a lower growl. "I guess I should thank you the best way _I_ know how."

"You're going to thank me for _thanking you_?"

"I think I've created a fuckin' monster," he said, letting his hand tickle down her side. He didn't miss the way she shifted her posture ever so slightly. It had two effects—she pressed down against him harder and it made his eyes roll back into his head a little; and second, it let him press his thumb to her clit, that was just as wet at the rest of her but probably at least twice as swollen. She threw her head back again and let his name out like it was some kind of a squeal. The only time she truly lost rhythm was when she was coming so hard she couldn't see, and as she began to roll against him more than slamming down like she had been, he knew what was going on. Plus, she was so tight he could feel it everywhere and even though it was the third time they'd done this today (technically the _fifth_ for her and he was totally going to demand they watch the fireworks at Lima Municipal from the hot tub tonight if for no other reason than to avoid returning her to her dads walking funny), he was not far behind her and he dropped his mouth to her chest and sucked on the supple flesh of her breast, tasting the tangy salt from their sweat all over her. It was something he'd never been particularly crazy about before, but with her it was something he couldn't get enough of; she finally took his ears under her palms to push him away from her skin.

"So…perhaps I was _hearing_ things, but did I hear you refer to me as a monster?" She asked. She was already walking away from him, stumbling like she was a little drunk. It looked like she was on her way to the kitchen and, presumably, for a little skinny dipping.

The other good news about these kinds of places? Two words: privacy fence.

He caught up to her easily and walked awkwardly right behind her, enjoying the feeling of her back rubbing against his chest as they strolled through the dining room they had been in. "Mmm," he murmured. He kissed her shoulder and licked his lips while they were still next to her skin. She turned her head as he smiled against something. "Maybe s'more like an _animal_."

She tossed her head back and laughed, so carefree in that moment he wanted to pin her to the wall again. For all the things he loved about her (that he wasn't saying out loud just now 'cause they'd gone way overboard on the cheesy and lovey stuff lately, fuck you very much), one of his favorite things by far was how much fun she was when it was just the two of them. Even when she was all mopey and barely sleeping after her surgery, they still managed to have a mostly good time together. And playing house with her was not nearly as bad as he had maybe thought it would be.

The thought scared the living fuck out of him, but then again…they had another a year left of high school before any of that was even worth thinkin' about. And it was going to be a damn good time getting there, he thought. As much as he wasn't an out-in-public sorta relationship guy, they were at a good point in their relationship because she would be like this with him.

"Well, I am _hungry,"_ she admitted. She stopped in front of the fridge, which meant he kinda tripped into her 'cause she wasn't expecting him to be there and she bent over abruptly.

"I thought you were gonna go swim," he said, pushing his hand against the freezer door and then hissing when his body slumped into contact with the cool metal.

"I was," she replied. It sounded like she had more to say. He drummed out a pattern on her lower back as she stooped down to the vegetable crisper drawer in the bottom. She grabbed the bag of carrots and stood back up. "You're going to have to clean her pool before we leave."

He shrugged and reached in around her to get a can of root beer. "I was already plannin' on it."

She looked at him doubtfully. "Does she have _another_ pool cleaner since your mom won't let you do that anymore? Or is there something I should know about the water I've been swimming in?"

He shot her a not amused glance, and even though her voice was stern, it was hard to be annoyed with her when she was innocently crunching on a carrot.

"No. I _know_ you and you're anal as fuck, so I cleaned the pool and the hot tub and at least half the house before you got here."

"I thought you just napped and drank a beer through my voice lesson before I came over," she commented easily.

The beer part was true, but he didn't necessarily feel the overwhelming need to just confirm what she already knew anyway. He just shook his head. "No. I had to make this house fit for a queen."

"Vomiting will supposedly damage my stitches," she said, tilting her head and gliding past him. Apparently she (she of the grand romantic gestures, the love ballads, and longing glances) had grown tired of their loving sickness during her recovery, too.

He gave a heavy chuckle and didn't mention those stitches had dissolved a while ago. "Then what the fuck will deep-throating do them 'cause…"

She shot him a dirty look. Well, it was at least two kinds of dirty. It kinda reminded him they were both still naked and how he couldn't wait to get her into the pool.

"I guess we won't find out _again_," she tossed over her shoulder as she moved outside through the French doors that let out to a stone patio and the pool area. She tossed the small bag of carrots on the table in the middle of the patio set and kept walking without looking back. He, on the other hand, hung back and watched her walk.

Had he mentioned _she was naked_ in the last three seconds? Because his appreciation for it was checking in basically right on time. His phone rang from the kitchen counter and he groaned because that had been one of his mom's rules about staying here for almost a week with no _real_ supervision: she called, he answered. No matter what.

He sighed. He should've given his mom her own ringtone when he got his new phone a couple days ago; he was normally all over that shit. But okay, you couldn't just expect him to have normal brain function when his dick function had all but disappeared once he'd gotten used to regular sex. And now… well, now he needed to recover in different ways. But it was _worth it_.

"Go for Puck," he answered with his usual greeting. They had been trying for at least a little discretion with their weekend; after all, it wasn't very badass to spend a huge holiday like Independence Day being all tied down. It _should_ be about minimal clothing, a couple different kinds of wet, some fireworks, and lots of booze—just usually with more than one other person.

He leaned over just a little bit where he could see Rachel executing a perfect dive into the pool. So there was basically nothing wrong with what he was doing. He had his bases covered (condoms were basically like a never-ending free gift to him from lots of people since Quinn and… well, whatever, fuck them. They didn't need to know he _still_ had to buy them sometimes because it's not like he'd stopped having sex altogether)…and his girlfriend was _not_ covered and _in the pool_ so he was going to make this call quick.

"Hey, dude," Mike said. "Where the hell are you? Hudson's doing some barbecue thing for most of Glee and like a third of Dalton."

"I'm…umm…" (Rachel had just sprawled out to float on her back. He was a little distracted.) "I'm out of town."

"You _are_?"

"Sorta," he said. _Outta town… right on the edge of town at the bluffs up on the hill…same thing._

"And are you alone or do you need some bro code cover?"

"No, I…"

Rachel's phone chimed—_a chime instead of a ringtone. He would have to look into that. It was way less obvious._ Might prevent the problem of having to answer his mom's call when they were in the middle of…well…it had just been awkward and he wasn't gonna think about that any more.

He pulled his phone down and covered the speaker with his hand. "Hey babe, you're phone's ringin'."

She righted herself in the water and it looked like she was going to ask him to answer it but then decided to just..y'know.. _kill him_ by exiting the water smoothly and walking right to the doorjamb. He held her phone out to her as Mike was _still _laughing his understanding.

"What the fuck is so amusing, Chang?"

"Nothing, I just… well, how is Rachel feeling? Is she back to her usual volume?"

"She's good," he said simply. All right, sometimes he couldn't keep himself from sounding like that and he liked to think the guys were getting used to it 'cause they didn't tease him about it. Besides, of all the guys he could forget to be indifferent in front of, it was Mike. Mike was about five kinds of sappy when it came to _his_ girl, and he kinda looked the other way if Puck did that, too.

(And it also meant Mike had helped him find ways to … occupy himself… while Rachel was laid up. He could only come up with so much to do to help her before his antagonistic nature kicked in and he wanted to bug her. Instead, he'd called Mike and Mike had been a real bro, constantly telling him ways to act against that nature and avoid pissing her off. Shit like soy ice cream was _not_ up his alley.)

Meanwhile, Rachel had missed Finn's call and she called him back, shivering a little and huddling together as she stood in the shade, still dripping wet from her too-brief swim. Puck saw her nipples tighten and the goosebumps standing out on her arms and he closed his eyes with a groan.

"Hey, Rach," Finn answered.

"Hey, what's going on?" She said, trying not to let her teeth chatter. It was nearly ninety degrees outside and shivering just _would not_ do.

"Barbecue," he replied. "Please tell me you don't have plans because Kurt made this mostly Warblers and… well, we just _really_ need some girls to balance it out."

"Santana can't do that on her own?"

"Well…no. You should come. There will be fireworks," he said. "We can light off the ones that shoot up in the air this year."

"Well thank you for the invitation. It sounds exciting, but I'm going to pass this time," she said. "Sorry."

"Well…I mean, are you still…"

She knew Finn (specifically) and the other Glee members (somewhat) had been engaging in more summer activities this year than they had last year. It was not the first phone call they'd gotten concerning her recovery or their (hers and Noah's combined) absence. But she generally hadn't been feeling up to company and had been marginally embarrassed by the fact she could drift off to sleep at a moment's notice. She was relieved to be sleeping better and getting back to her old self, but she was surprised to admit she mostly wanted to share that newfound energy with Noah.

She glanced away and briefly let her eyes roam over the guy, who was muttering words she couldn't hear into his phone. _Oh_.

He was naked. And it was pretty obvious he knew _she _was naked. He had a fairly predictable response to that, especially given they had 'cooled it down' the last few weeks. She looked down at herself and realized _why_ he was having the reaction he was having. She couldn't ignore the rush of desire—the _insane_ rush of desire—that flowed unchecked through her, rocking her all the way down into the pit of her stomach. She needed to get off the phone.

But she understood what Finn was saying, and honestly? She wasn't above using it for an 'out'.

"Yeah, kind of," she said.

"You _sound_ a lot better."

"I am in that respect, but I wasn't sleeping all that well," she excused, biting her lip again. (Which, for the record, kind of made Puck want to mount her in the doorway. He turned his eyes away from her.)

"Oh," he said. He was one of those guys that understood the need for a proper amount of rest, so she was playing to the right audience and she knew it. "Okay, well Mike is calling on the other line so I'll let you get back to it. Call me if you change your mind."

_I won't. I'll have to find a way to make it up to you later_, she thought. It wasn't that she felt bad exactly, but…she could've _sworn_ Noah was on the phone with Mike.

"Okay. Bye."

"Bye," he said quickly and then he was gone. Puck had put his phone back down on the counter, then replaced hers too so she didn't have to come into the house dripping wet, and was looking at her like she was a steak and he'd been fasting.

Neither of which were true, but she met his gaze back the same way because she knew how he felt.

She wanted him like he wanted her.

She tried not to smile. "So what'd Mike have to say?"

He shrugged and took a pull from his root beer. "Probably 'bout the same as Finn. Barbecue we ain't goin' to tonight."

Rachel nodded. "And what reason did Mike possibly have for calling Finn, then? Mike obviously had all the details on the barbecue."

"Oh, what? Mike's my boy."

She couldn't repress her laughter any longer. "Oh, really? Do we need to invite him over, too?"

"_No_," he said firmly. "That's not how I roll and you know it. Plus, I'm not really allowed to have more than…well…"

"Mrs. Finkhauser doesn't know I'm here, does she?"

"She said I could have _a friend_ or _two_ over. S'what she told my mom, too. I don't think she needs to know what kinda pool party we're having." He glanced at her, giving her an obvious leering and once over, with the raised eyebrow and everything. She shivered again, and this time it had nothing to with being in the shade.

She abruptly broke the eye contact by turning to run to the pool and dive in.

He was right behind her, matching step for step and somehow managing a parallel dive that brought him right up behind her as he snaked an arm around her waist and dragged her against him.

"You're _so fucking hot_ it's ridiculous," he growled before he turned his face and pressed his lips to her neck.

"What are you gonna do about it?" She asked, her eyes fluttering closed under his persistent kiss in _just_ the right spot.

"Hmm," he murmured carefully, considering his options. He left one hand on her hip, squeezing her warm skin, while he pulled her closer and reached the other down. She let her legs float up to give him access and he streaked two fingers over her slit, letting them dip down into her as she pressed her ass against him again.

Legit, he wasn't sure _he_ would be able to walk if they fucked again this quick. Then again, they were in the pool so… as long as he didn't drown, who cared? He wanted her to scream his name again. He was kind of addicted to that sound, both because it was her voice and because of the _way_ it was going down.

Going down. Hmm.

He abruptly pulled out then turned her around and lifted her up onto the black-tiled edge of the pool. Without saying a word or asking permission, he lifted both her feet up onto the tile and pressed his mouth where his fingers had been. She leaned back on her hands, then brought one forward against the back of his head, holding him just still enough she could move against his face.

He wasn't exactly _sure_ where she got the muscle strength to actually thrust against him, but he let himself eat like he was starving until she laid all the way back. He let his fingers drift over her thighs, still dripping cool water from the pool, and he brought a handful of the water up to dribble over the area he was drinking from. Her hands went up to her own nipples and he had to tear his eyes away and focus on what he had been doing. There was a certain pitch he was waiting for her to make; they hadn't done this yet since her voice had come back full-force and he wondered if the noise would be the same or if he'd have to learn a new one.

It was the same, but she reared up on him like she hadn't come for a month and gasped out his name anyway. Once she dropped her butt back down to the tile, he eased himself up out of the water on shaking arms and managed to press himself inside her and lay on top of her all at once.

"You good for one more?" He asked, watching her eyes drag open. She gave him a small smile.

"Yes, but then you might have to carry me around for the rest of the evening," she said. He nodded and rolled into her all the way, loving the way she rubbed her cool, damp thighs against his sides. He shivered a little.

"Well….there's a hot tub over there with our names all over it," he said.

"_Good_," she panted.

He kissed her forehead and brought his hand up to cup her jaw a little.

"I'll carry you over there," he promised.

"If you're not crawling with me, I haven't done my job properly," she said, giving a dry swallow before her mouth popped open and she panted again.

He gave her a little grin because _honestly?_ She was just too fucking much but in the best way possible. There was _no_ other girl for him, really. She just…there was no way she could blow his mind for twenty-four hours straight and then imply she was a failure.

"You're amazing," he said simply. "And I'm…_tired_."

She laughed and tucked her head against his shoulder and they laughed, all tangled up together as he moved inside her again. They were going slow, because there was no reason to hurry and no reason to be as intense about it as they had been all day so far.

"I'm glad you feel better though," he says. "And for the record…your singing was off the hook before but…I think your voice sounds even better now."

"You do?"

"Yeah, 'cause I've _definitely_ never heard you say my name the way you do now. Shit's hot."

She laughed again and he could feel her laughter rolling through him because of the way they were joined. "You want me to say your name, huh?"

"Um…_yeah_," he agreed. He pressed his forehead to hers and continued with his slow strokes, taking his time winding her up again.

She let her tired eyes open, dancing them over his face. He was so close and so warm and just…she was so glad to be there with him. She hoped he knew, but she didn't really want to _say _it, either. It was easier to joke.

"Maybe we'll have to wait a few weeks to do this again," she commented lightly. He brought his head up from where he'd laid it almost sleepily on her shoulder.

"Bite your fuckin' tongue."

"I thought that was _your_ job," she commented lightly. He kissed her in response, nipping at her lips and tongue until she granted him the entrance he sought. He trailed his hand up her shin at the same time, applying slight pressure to her knee where it was pressed into him. It changed the angle of things just enough. He felt the change in her breathing—that hadn't changed either—and sped up, using his last burst of energy to make her see stars. She couldn't keep herself from crying out his name. He couldn't keep himself from collapsing into her after he came, too.

They laid there together for a long time until he offered to play rock/paper/scissors to determine who would go retrieve their swimsuits from the pool house before they got in the hot tub. He wasn't entirely serious because he _knew_ she was even more worn out than he was—plus, he had promised to take care of her and fucking her to the ground then making her get up didn't really fit in with that.

He went and got their swimsuits and her cover-up thing (he kind of _hated_ that thing, but he hated the idea of her being sunburned and in pain and also not wanting to be touched even more) and they dressed before easing into some lounger chairs and dozing off for a while in the shade. Rachel was typically anti-nap, claiming it severely damaged day-to-day productivity and promoted a lazy mentality that often led to complacency…or something else he tuned out…but it seemed like maybe he'd found a way to change her attitude about it. Just to prove he was totally okay with her new attitude, he took her hand before he fell asleep and he _didn't _smile when she curled toward his chair in her own.

Later that night, she had at least lost the cover and they were in the hot tub. He'd grilled dinner for them (she said she wasn't at all surprised he could _cook_ when it came to something like that, because of course cooking meat was a "man skill"—he even managed to grill some squash for her that he had to admit turned out pretty good) but now they were just eating fruit out of a glass bowl. And whenever he reached for fruit, he swiped in through whipped cream (vegan-they made that shit and he knew it now) before he kinda partway missed her mouth with it. She had protested few times about getting whipped cream in the hot tub but he thought maybe she was enjoying the relaxing and the making out.

The last time he had "missed her mouth" with the whipped cream, it hadn't _really _taken him twenty minutes it suck it off her mouth, either.

"Noah, do you think we're…I mean, is it _bad_ that we kind of bailed on everyone else and kept it just the two of us?"

"Whadd'ya mean?" He asked. He reached for his bottle of water; he'd set the hot tub to a sweaty 101 degrees, and while it felt good on some of the muscles he legit didn't know he had until they were _tired_, it also meant she'd been nagging him about the importance of staying hydrated.

"Well...it's just been almost a month since I had that surgery, and I honestly think in that time I've managed to ignore everyone except you."

"I refuse to be ignored," he said, leaning toward her and resting his arm behind her on the tile around the hot tub.

She looked over at him, her face openly affectionate. "While that is _true_, I just worry that it makes us be less well-rounded than we perhaps ought to be. I mean…if we broke up, what would I be left with? You're basically the extent of my social life this summer."

"You worry too much, B," he says. "First off, I don't think we're breakin' up. Like…for real, you're the first person that's been able to wear me out." She laughed and right on schedule, he yawned. "But really…" he voice dropped down to the pansy octave and he didn't give a shit. There was obviously something she needed to hear. "Really this is legit the best Fourth of July I've ever had. It's 'cause of you and us and I'd have to be a fuckin' moron to let you go now. But if it makes you feel better…well…we'll have a video game night or somethin' and invite everyone. Aren't your dads doin' another cruise before school starts?"

She gave a little nod before he leaned back. The fireworks at the park were close enough to this house they had to lean back to see them _over_ the house but really, they had a perfect view and the first one had just fired off.

"Well…sounds to me like a perfect time to do all this again. And one night we can invite everyone else and do video games or somethin'."

"Okay," she agreed quietly, settling in against him. He felt her head turn from where it was resting on his shoulder. "You would do this again?"

Sometimes he just knows shit. And this time, he _knew_ she wasn't talking about the weekend. She was talking about everything. He kissed her forehead.

"You betcha," he answered. His answer was the same either way. He felt her finger swipe at his cheek but he didn't think about it much until he felt her rise up just enough to lick and kiss at his skin. She'd wiped whipped cream on him and no sooner was she kissing it off him than her hand was in his lap, too, working at the waistband of his swim trunks. He grinned.

"What about _it?_" She asked, her voice low and raw in his ear. "Would you do _it_ again, too?"

He turned his head toward her, his green eyes swiping once over her damp skin, sparkling from the fireworks dancing over their heads and the red lights in the bottom of the hot tub. (Those were secretly his favorite because they made her look almost pink and she just…his girl was fuckin' hot, okay?)

"Toldja…you're an _animal_," he breathed out, even as she let out a breathy little giggle against his lips.

But really, his answer when it came to his girl was always the same word—_yes_; he could only hope he was fucked because it seemed like she'd figured him out.


End file.
